The word from the RTÉ number crunchers is that 1.7million people across the country tuned in to see Kellie Harrington bless us with another magical Olympic night. Well, if it wasn’t for my daughter, that number would have been 1,699,999.
I’d got home from a two-week volunteering trip to Kenya on Tuesday night and fell on to the couch, absolutely shagged. But Ashley wasn’t going to let my jetlag be an excuse for missing a piece of history. And bless her for shaking me because waking up and watching Kellie do what she did, the way she did it, and celebrate it the way she did will live with me forever.
A where-were-you moment that you know the answer to in an instant. What a bloody night. I know I’m supposed to be a hard man and maybe too much of the time I am.
But watching the footage of Kellie celebrating with a song, her voice that perfect mix of soft and strong that she seems to carry in everything she does, hit me hard. Then when I saw her mam standing at the door of the house back in Portland Row singing the same song I had more than a tear in my eye. There were a few rolling down my face too.
My tache came in handy, mopping them up. We probably use a word like heartwarming too often but watching those moments, I could have put my hand to my chest and felt it heating up. What is it about Kellie Harrington that makes us feel the way we feel? I think it’s probably somewhere there in the lyrics echoing through Roland Garros late into the night and then the next mo.