A star in and out of the ring -Kellie Harrington still winning in lockdown

There may be no sport at present, but that doesn’t stop Kellie Harrington picking up awards.

This week it was confirmed Harrington had been awarded the Irish Time’s Sportswoman of the Month for April.

The Inner City Dub hadn’t fought in April, indeed she hasn’t fought this year’s European Championship semi final, but she still managed to impress the judges.

With no sport on the Irish Times panel revealed they would continue the awards and present them to those doing great community work.

“Initially, we reckoned the only option was to press pause on the awards and wait for some normality to return to the sporting world. But all the while we were hearing about the priceless contributions so many of our sportswomen have been making to their communities since the coronavirus struck, and we concluded that they deserved to be saluted as much for that as anything they have achieved in the sporting arena.

“So, for the duration of these strange times, and until they can return to competing in their respective sports, we decided there’d be no harm in picking out one sportswoman each month and doffing our collective caps to the efforts they are putting in to helping the people around them.”

The first winner was genuine Olympic medal prospect Kellie Harrington.

Explaining why they chose the boxer the Irish Times wrote:

“When she returned from London to Dublin, Harrington, like all her team-mates, had to go in to quarantine for two weeks, but when she emerged from it she chose to return to her job as a cleaner in St Vincent’s Hospital in Fairview. She could have opted to spend her days watching Netflix, like many of us, but, as she told Ryan Tubridy last month, “I told them that I’m there for cover work that needs to be done, because people had taken holidays and people were sick. I knew they were going to be out on their feet in there, so I just offered myself to go in and I’ve been in there every day since.”