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.
’ ‘Once it had been announced that Walsh had secured her Olympic ticket at the qualifier in Bangkok back in May, she sunk to her knees and unleashed a roar. She was soon joined by her father Gerry, and siblings Mairead and Joe, who had all the made the trip to Thailand. A phone call was made to her mother, Geraldine.
After that, one of the first messages of congratulations from back in Ireland came from Eames, the surgeon who had helped to salvage her career. ‘Every boxer gets a thumb injury at some stage,’ Walsh shrugs. ‘But mine didn’t seem to want to heal.
’ It first occurred in early 2020, just a few months after she won her first elite welterweight title. Sparring with Tina Desmond ahead of the Strandja Cup, she ruptured a ligament in her thumb. She had been eyeing a possible spot in the Tokyo Olympics, but the troublesome injury put paid to that aspiration.
Desmond travelled to the Olympic qualifier in London instead, but that event was abandoned as the world came to a standstill because of the Covid pandemic. It allowed time for Walsh’s thumb to heal but by October, as the world was slowly opening up again, she suffered the same injury after throwing a punch. By the time she ruptured the same ligament for a third time in a routine spar the following March, Eames suggested a thumb fusion.
Walsh went with it. ‘Any time I was throwing a power shot with my right hand, I was in bother. Ended up getting a thumb fusion and then a reinforced thumb fusion the fourth time.
And then when I broke it, I didn’t need surgery the fifth time. It is a long auld story, but one that I am very proud to have got through.’ Walsh came from a soccer background – she initially popped into the Spartacus club in Cloncollig Business Park, across the road from her family home as a means of keeping fit in the off-season.
And in all her years, running up and down the left wing for Shamrock Rovers and Ireland underage teams, she never picked up a serious injury. Things were different when she turned her full attention to the ring. ‘I was born on Friday the 13th, so maybe that’s where the bad luck comes from,’ smiles Walsh, who will turn 29 on October 13th this year.
No sooner had the thumb problem finally cleared up than she was lifting weights in the shed that she and her dad had converted into a makeshift gym during Covid when a 10kg weight fell on her little toe. ‘The pain was worse than what I endured from my five thumb injuries put together,’ she recalls. ‘When I go to local schools now and tell the story, the kids always laugh.
But it wasn’t funny at the time. I was bawling, crying.’ An x-ray at Tullamore General Hospital confirmed a fracture.
On the day that Argentina and France played out a thrilling World Cup final, Walsh was preparing for more surgery. The Elite championships were less than a month away. The surgeon inserted a screw in her toe and her dad fashioned a piece of plastic piping to protect it while in the ring.
And in the national stadium, Walsh proved that she had come back stronger from all the adversity by beating Amy Broadhurst on a split decision in the welterweight final. After everything she had gone through in the past three years, Walsh had managed to put herself firmly back in the Olympic picture. However, only a few weeks later, her world seemed to fall apart all over again when Dmitry Dmitruk, the coach in Tullamore who took Walsh under his wing, announced he was leaving Irish boxing and the High Performance programme to take up a role with Indian boxing, which Bernard Dunne was head of at the time.
It was Dmitruk, a Belarussian who had settled in Tullamore and set up the Spartacus club, who saw the potential in the 16-year-old footballer who came to the boxing gym to maintain her fitness. ‘It just shows the influence a good coach can have not only on your sporting career, but also your life,’ Walsh says. ‘Dimi was almost a father figure to me and he was in High Performance as well.
He was my first coach, installed the foundations and everything I learned from him made me the athlete I am. So, when he left for India, I was very lost. I felt like I lost a limb.
’ Eventually Walsh hooked up with Noel Burke at St Mary’s in Tallaght, where Kellie Harrington also trains : ‘I really appreciate everything Noel has done for me and just being around Kellie, success breeds success.’ She retained her national elite welterweight title last November, which booked her ticket for the Olympic qualifiers in Italy in March. But it was there that her run of bad luck continued, as despite comprehensively out-boxing Poland’s Aneta Rygielska, who was given a standing count and docked a point for holding, two of the three judges gave the fight to the Pole.
It was a horrendous decision – and one that proved that for all the strides that amateur boxing has made since the corruption that tainted Rio, there is still room for the odd bad call. ‘Initially, I was devastated and wondering how could I be so unlucky? That with all the injuries, surely I was due a good turn in my luck,’ Walsh recalls. ‘But it can send you one way or the other, it can either swallow you up or you can come back fighting.
‘For me, I have good family and friends around me. I had a week to wallow in my feelings and allow myself to feel upset and feel all those kind of things within the comfort of my own house. And when I was going back to training, I just drew a line under it.
As crappy as it was, I couldn’t change it, so I had to look at what I could do. As I said, controlling the controllables. ‘I am just glad the coaches showed confidence and belief in me and gave me the opportunity to qualify in Bangkok and thankfully, everything worked out.
’ Walsh takes herself off social media before any competition, so she says all the controversy over her selection for the final qualifier and Amy Broadhurst declaring for Team GB passed her by. ‘I just focused on myself. I feel in boxing if you start focusing on all these external factors, if it is even one per cent of energy you are using up, it is still one per cent you are taking from what you should be focusing on.
‘That is something that I learned down the years, just to stay in your own lane. In an individual sport, you have to be selfish at times and just focus on yourself.’ Walsh boxed brilliantly in Bangkok, and she reckons now that the four bouts in Thailand will have brought her on no end ahead of the 66kgs competition in Paris.
There’s a whole crew coming over from Offaly, who are well represented in Paris, not just by Walsh, but by Jordan Conroy and Megan Burns in rugby sevens, Megan Armitage in road cycling and of course, Shane Lowry. Walsh and Lowry met up at a recent Team Ireland photo-shoot with the golfer reminiscing about how he had his first summer job with Walsh’s father. ‘It is gas, we know each other really well, and now here we are, going to the Olympics together, flying the flag for Offaly.
’ Just like Lowry, Walsh is blessed with that easy-going nature associated with the Faithful County. And given how articulate and affable she is, and with what she has gone through over the past few years, there is every chance that Walsh could become one of the Irish stories of these Games. She is going to Paris, firmly believing that if she performs, she can beat anyone on her day.
As she readily concedes, she wasn’t always blessed with that self-confidence and even though she represented Ireland at under-age level in football, looking back, Walsh reckons that she was hindered by that on a soccer pitch. ‘I think what stopped me from going to the next level with the football was a lack of self-belief. But I think you get lessons in life for a reason and when I got all the injuries, it was another chance to assess everything.
I have taken it all in my stride and appreciated it a bit more. These opportunities, being able to do it now and being able to live the life that you dreamed of as a kid, there aren’t too many people who are able to say that.’ The whole Walsh clan and extended family will decamp to Paris in the coming weeks, a visit that they will hope will conclude with the welterweight final in Roland Garros.
Grainne’s brother Joe is coming over from Vancouver, her older brother Patrick is coming from Berlin, while sister Mairead and her parents are coming from Ireland. As well as countless friends. They all know what it has taken, the adversity that Grainne Walsh has had to overcome to call herself an Olympian.
The numerous surgeries on her thumb and the specialist saying that her career, and health of her hand, were in jeopardy. The fractured toe and losing her coach and mentor before the scandalous judging decision that robbed her in Milan. No wonder she insists that everything happens for a reason – and every setback makes you a stronger person.
‘If I had a crystal ball back in 2020 and was able to see a few years in the future, I don’t know if I would have stuck with it, don’t know back then if I believed I was strong enough, but it goes to show what you can come through. And I think it does make you feel that everything happens for a reason.’ Walsh has overcome so much to simply walk to the ring in Paris.
But she believes there may be a couple of chapters left in her remarkable story yet..
