OUR HORSES are dodgy, our runners are slow, our officials are bickering. Business at usual at the Olympics yesterday until - lo, what light in the east - a boxer from Neilstown saved our games.
Three Irish boxers fought yesterday in semi-finals for the right to upgrade their medals from a guaranteed bronze to something more fetching in silver or gold.
Kenny Egan, the team's captain and most treasured warhorse, was the only one to prevail.
He now stands one fight away from bringing Ireland its first boxing gold since the Barcelona games of 1992 when Michael Carruth won through. Egan was trained from childhood to the senior ranks by Noel Humpson, Carruth's late uncle.
Yesterday's performance from Egan was that of a man feeling no pressure. Refusing to be flurried or hustled into a brawl with his British opponent, he continued with the smart defensive strategy that had seen him concede just four points in his previous bouts.
He gave away three scoring punches yesterday but never looked remotely threatened by the honest ploddings of Tony Jeffries from Sunderland, who stayed level until the end of the first round and fell further and further behind after that, losing on a score of 10-3 in the end. Egan, who was heartbroken not to have made the Irish team for Athens four years ago, started boxing seriously as a young boy having watched Carruth win gold in Barcelona.
Tomorrow's final, scheduled for 8.50am Irish time, is the last step on the long march he set out on when he hurried to join Neilstown Boxing Club in the hope of becoming the next Carruth.
That journey has brought him many heartbreaks, but yesterday, absorbing the reports from home of wild celebrations and assessing the sudden bulge in press interest here, Egan jokingly made reference to how this weekend is going to be a dividing point in his life.
"I'll hate going to the shop to try to get the paper, won't I? I'll need a hat and shades and a false nose and a moustache. What have I done?"
And as for tomorrow, fighting China's Zhang Xiaoping for gold in the Workers' Gymnasium in Beijing?
"I will love it," he said, "this is where it has all led to. I believe that there is no point in getting through those ropes if you aren't going to give it all. When I come out of there, win or lose, there will be nothing left. Nothing."
Earlier in the day Paddy Barnes and Darren Sutherland both lost their semi-final bouts by convincing margins. For Sutherland it was his last fight as an amateur as he moves on to a professional career.
