Grainne Walsh shows the series of scars that run down the length of her right thumb like an interlacing thread. Not that it’s needed, but it acts as a physical reminder of the adversity that she’s had to battle through, the pain and uncertainty on the journey that has brought her to Paris next week. Only two years ago, the personable Tullamore native felt that her Olympic dream was all but over.
The respected Belfast-based trauma and orthopaedic surgeon Michael Eames was about to go into her thumb for a fourth time to try and repair ligaments. And he warned her that he wouldn’t do it again, that there comes a point where the risk to Walsh’s hand health was too great. ‘He said it as plainly as that – that he couldn’t keep operating on my thumb indefinitely.
He said your hand health for the rest of your life is more important than your boxing career and if this injury keeps happening, you are going to have to look at alternative options. We can’t keep going in there because you will lose the use of your hand. ‘When I did get injured again, I thought that was the end of the road, I sat down with my parents and started looking at college courses I might do.
I thought I had to go a different path, but I managed to break a different part of the thumb, which was actually good news in the grand scheme of things. It didn’t need surgery. ‘So, I have had more lives than a cat and I am still on that last life, so touch wood, that it keeps going well for Paris.
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