Gold medalist Katie Taylor is the hero that Ireland desperately needed -- After dreadful times, at last a ray of sunshine breaks through at the Olympics

Katie Taylor after her victory on Thursday

The Irish have suffered a few dreadful years, turning from Europe’s poster children, to goats.

All the old familiar devils are back; mass unemployment, rampant emigration, bankers greed, made worse now in some ways, because for a few brief shining years the country saw what it could become.

So heads are down and depression rampant and dreams are dying everywhere you look. Gloom, deep and dark, reigns

Then another hero comes along.

Katie Taylor is an unlikely one. Daughter of an English father, an evangelical Protestant who prays and gives praise before and after every fight, she is hardly the archetypal hero we have come to expect from the Emerald Isle.

But yesterday she broke all the stereotypes.

Before an audience that included Kate Middleton and thousands of Irish fans singing their hearts out, she won Ireland’s first gold medal of these games and the first since Michelle Smith’s highly dubious swimming haul in 1996 in Atlanta.

Ireland has only won eight gold medals in the history of the Olympics. Taylor won one of the first Olympic boxing medals for women and in the process stamped herself as one of the heroes of the games.

A Cinderella sport so long ignored by the International Olympic Committee at last found its day in the sun -- and a heroine to go along with it .

Don’t just take the Irish word for it. Here is what Sports Illustrated said.

“Looking for the most popular athlete at the Olympics? Any list has to include Taylor. Katie Taylor might be the most popular athlete in any sport at the London Olympics,” the magazine’s website reported on Thursday.

And here is what the London-based Guardian said after her victory

“Katie Taylor is a giant of Irish boxing, European, World, and now Olympic champion – a showman and a folk heroine.

“Everything she does gets a roar, whether it's hugging her coach – who doubles as her father – or grinning at the camera. She has very easy manners, a look of genuine affection when she makes her peace with her opponent at the end of each fight; if there is one Olympic athlete you'd go to the pub with (apart from Bradley Wiggins), it would be Taylor. “

When the Irish anthem was played for the first time in 16 years at the Olympics at the London venue there was not a dry eye in the house or in Ireland or among those abroad watching.

The sun came out for Ireland yesterday, after a lousy spell, and a modest 26-year old girl from Bray, County Wicklow became an unlikely hero.

In the process she lifted Irish hearts back where they belonged.

Why basketball should be banned from the next Olympics after US crushed Nigeria -- Running up the score against Third World country not the Olympic spirit

Team USA's Kobe Bryant, left, controls the ball in front of Nigeria's Derrick Obasohan
(Photo: LA Times)

The US  basketball team smashed Nigeria 156 to 73 or was it 6,784 to 2?

Who cares?

That bunch of overpaid, overblown, egomaniacs on the US team have as much to do with the Olympics as I do.

Where is the Olympic spirit in hammering a Third World country into total submission and taunting them by running up a massive score along the way?

Whose bright idea was it to blaze this “victory” across many of the major newspapers on line in the US including the New York Post?

At least the IOC had the decency to remove softball from the Olympics given that it was so much a one-country sport.

Basketball is in the same position. It is not an Olympic sport when you have the likes of Lebron James playing against teams he could probably beat single handedly.

Where’s the Olympic sport in that?

You might as well have American football included with Peyton Manning lining up against some hapless foreigner who can hardly throw a ball.

It is that ridiculous.

And as I’m at it, women’s sand volleyball or whatever they call it is another Olympic ‘sport’ I find ridiculous.

Lots of pictures of tight bikinis and svelte bodies does not make an Olympic sport -- but NBC cannot stop filming it.

We know why -- so every dirty old man in Peoria Illinois can stay up watching it – excuse the pun.

Seriously, much of what the Olympics has become is a charade, a necessary clown show in order to keep viewers watching.

NBC has had some superb coverage but much of their nightly show is for the circus atmosphere and has nothing to do with real ability.

Back in the days of the Roman Empire they had sideshows all over the arena before the main acts, the gladiators, began to compete.

It is not dissimilar today.

Thank goodness the track and field, the equivalent of the gladiators, where real talent comes to the fore, is finally starting.

This Olympics has had many heroic moments so far with many more to come.

But NBC and America needs to realize there is a massive difference between spectacle and achievement, between good-looking women and real female athletes, between multi-millionaire egomaniacs winning phony victories and ordinary competitors.

The difference seems to have escaped many.

Why are the English cheering for the Irish at the Olympics? -- All changed utterly as old foe embraces Irish competitors

Irish Olympic team greeted with a warm reception in London

Des Cahill, an Irish sports commentator, put the cat among the pigeons yesterday when he tweeted “The English public are giving massive support to all the Irish athletes at the Olympics. It’s embarrassing, knowing it is not done in reverse.”

His tweet drew a massive response. His point was clear. At every competition where an Irish athlete was participating, the English fans cheered and clapped loudly, second only to their support of their own athletes.

It was clear from the opening ceremony that the English crowd heartily approved of the Irish team as they walked into the stadium. The US, British, and Irish teams got the largest cheers according to media who were there.

What is going on?

As Des Cahill pointed out, it is highly unlikely that the Irish, if they were hosting, would cheer as loudly for the British.

I guess it has to do with conqueror and conquered but also with more recent events which have taken the edge off the sad history.

Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Ireland last year was truly a watershed. Her conciliatory actions there and the massive approval of the Irish people registered heavily in Britain, where she is seen as the ultimate class act by many.

The fact that The Troubles are over and that Londoners, in particular, no longer go around worrying that they will be targets of an IRA bombing, also improves relations dramatically.

When the violence stopped, the healing began and the relationship now is on far more equal terms.

Many Irish for their part proclaim they are still anti-British, but after seeing the work that men like Tony Blair did to make the peace process happen, not to mention the apology for Bloody Sunday and the Famine, it is hard to hold that grudge much longer.

Besides, there has been been so much intermingling over the years that the shared ethnicity is a binding factor.

Take soccer legend Wayne Rooney, born of Irish Catholic stock in Liverpool. Take Tony Blair whose childhood holidays were spent in Donegal with relatives, or take Danny Boyle, whose mother is from Galway, who pulled off the massive Olympic opening ceremony, as examples.

It is a very healthy and welcome sign that the British are cheering for the Irish in London and it is no exaggeration to say that the day will come soon when it is reciprocated in Ireland.

That is how it should be for two countries who have been so intertwined in a negative way for so long but who are now learning how to live together so much better.

The Olympics and the reception for the Irish is another step forward in the right direction.