Katie Taylor: The Early Days of a Boxing Champion

The first time I saw Katie Taylor, she was just a kid with borrowed gloves and a look in her eye that stopped you in your tracks.

It was the early 1990s and I was working for The Big Issue, the street magazine that offered people affected by poverty and homelessness a way to earn their own money. “A hand up, not a hand out” wasn’t just a slogan; it shaped the kind of stories we went looking for. That’s how I ended up on a train to Bray, Co Wicklow, sent to photograph a young girl who, I’d been told, couldn’t get enough of boxing.

Bray boxing club was no cathedral of sport, just a modest gym with the familiar smell of sweat, leather and old ambition. Inside, Pete Taylor greeted me, friendly but busy, and then brought forward his daughter: 10-year-old Katie.

She was small, slight, hair pulled back, gloves already on. No fanfare. No shyness either.

We started with a few frames of her working with Pete. He held the pads; she went to work. The punches snapped, not flailed. There was a rhythm to it, a seriousness. She listened to his instructions, adjusted, hit harder. You could see there was nothing novelty about this. She wasn’t there to play at boxing.

Then she stepped into the ring with a boy.

That was when everything changed.

Her eyes sharpened. The energy in the room tilted. This was no longer a drill between father and daughter; this was a contest, however small, and Katie wanted it. She went after him, hunting him around the ring, always pressing, always on the front foot. He moved, he retreated, he tried to stay clear, but she kept closing the distance, punching with a relentlessness that seemed to surprise everyone except Pete.

She wasn’t reckless. She was relentless.

Behind the camera, I almost forgot to shoot. There was something startling about seeing that level of intent in a 10-year-old. No posing, no preening, just pure focus and a refusal to back off. The boy spent most of the round circling, trying to find space. Katie kept taking it away.

When we finally stepped outside, the light in Bray had softened. The sun was dropping, leaving that warm, golden wash photographers dream about. We made the most of it, shooting Katie against the evening glow.

She stood there, gloves still on, face flushed from the work inside. In those quiet moments, without the thud of punches or the echo of shouts, something else came through. Determination, yes, but also a certain steel. A calm certainty that this ring, this sport, this life, belonged to her.

You could see it in her eyes.

Long before the Olympic podiums and world titles, before arenas sold out to watch her fight, that look was already there in a small gym in Bray, chasing down a boy who couldn’t keep her off him.