Sutherland returns to Dunboyne and a hero"s welcome

From double vision to tunnel vision could be one way to describe Darren Sutherland"s route to an Olympic medal, following his visit to St Peter"s College in Dunboyne last week with his coveted Beijing bronze. Sutherland, student of the year at the Dunboyne student in 2004, was back in his alma mater on Thursday to display the medal to the students there, fulfilling a promise he made in Beijing. For that student of the year award in 2004, he was presented with the perpetual Bradán Feasa sculpture of the salmon of knowledge. The traits of the Bradán Feasa include hope, courage and commitment, and if anyone personifies these traits it is Darren Sutherland, who kept the hundreds of students enthralled with the story of how he achieved an Olympic medal when he joined assembly in the community centre on Thursday morning. He admitted embarrassment by all the fuss over the story which had become 'so big" that he himself got hard to believe it at times. He was greeting with cheers and the school choir singing 'The Eye of The Tiger" when he was accompanied by principal Eamonn Gaffney into the assembly. Paying tribute to his commitment, tenacity and sacrifice, Mr Gaffney told the students that simply to get to the Olympics is an incredible achievement, and there aren"t too many people in the world who participate at that level. 'But to get there and to finish in the top three in the world in your competition and win a medal is incredibly special,' he said. 'And Darren has done that, and not in an easy way. He put a lot of hard work into it.' A community centre full of teenagers that teachers found difficult to keep quiet a few minutes earlier, now hung onto every word as the boxer traced his journey from Blanchardstown, Sheffield, Dunboyne and Dublin City University to Beijing and back. 'I feel so embarrassed by all the attention,' he told them. 'I"m still an ordinary person, like everyone else, and had the dedication, commitment, and work, and a dream that I could achieve success.' He said he came from an ordinary working class family with no silver spoon, who did his Junior Certificate in Riversdale Community College in Blanchardstown, and was tidy at boxing at the time. 'Then, I was offered the chance to go to England, and train in a professional gym with Brendan Ingle. He had this flamboyant young Arab lad, Prince Naseem Hamed, there at the time, and I jumped at the opportunity.' For the 16 year-old, it meant dropping out of school, uprooting from his family, and moving to Sheffield on his own. 'I can"t say it went as planned - it wasn"t as easy as I thought it would be. There was rent and bills, and I was working part-time and trying to train. Is this what it"s all about, I wondered. Then, I realised I had nothing to fall back on.' He came back from England, and wanted to go back to education, but found all kind of conditions were necessary to go back as a mature student. 'You had to be on the dole for a year, and things like that. And the family couldn"t afford private education. I needed a Leaving Certificate and my sisters were going to school here in St Peter"s, so I met Mr Gaffney about the possibility of coming in.' Eamonn Gaffney warned him that he would be treated no differently than the younger students, that he would have to wear the uniform, and asked him did he know what he was taking on. The family had by then moved to Navan, and the girls were travelling to school in Dunboyne. 'I did, and I kept a low profile, as I had gone off to England in this blaze of glory and coverage around Blanchardstown that I was going off boxing with Prince Naseem, and now here I was back in a school uniform at nearly 21.' He used to run a school dance as a DJ. 'I used to be up here on the stage and had all the third years dancing to tunes,' he laughed. He got a Leaving Certificate of around 475 points, and was accepted into DCU to study sports science. He was also still training a bit, and representing Ireland in tournaments abroad, and the boxing bug bit again, especially as he was winning in Europe. Over the past four years, he had been juggling boxing with studying, and just completed the second year of his degree. Qualifying for the Olympics was looking possible, then a major setback. In a routine international against a Russian in the National Stadium in Dublin, the thumb of his opponent"s glove caught his left eye. 'It pushed the eye back into the socket, and fractured the eye socket in two places, with a nerve muscle trapped. I had double vision and thought this was the end of the road. in hospital, plates were inserted, but the double vision was still there, and six months later, I still didn"t know whether I"d box again. But at least I was in DCU and had that fall-back. When I got the all clear at the end of 2006, it was like being reborn.' Following that, Sutherland successfully defended his national title, and attempted Olympic qualification, in the Europeans in 2007. 'But I was putting too much pressure on myself, and didn"t do well, and the papers were slating me and saying I wasn"t going to qualify, and that it was a waste of money training us. But I kept the faith and kept chugging along.' At the start of 2008, he agreed with DCU that he would attempt to qualify for Beijing and then go back and do his exams. Throwing himself into training, he missed four months of classes, and in the last qualifiers in Athens in April, he won a gold medal and qualified for the Olympics. However, there was no time for celebrations - he had to go straight back to DCU and do his exams, cramming all the missed lectures into a couple of weeks. 'Being in the Olympics was an amazing experience,' the middleweight boxer told the students. 'I can"t put it into words. All these amazing athletes were wandering by you in the food hall in tha Olympics village, but they were all there for the same reason as you. We were all in the same boat - all out there to perform. And I was going to put my best into the two weeks out there, because it would be something I"d never get back again. I used the same ethos as I did in everything else, and did my best, and in the ring, the same as in any other tournament, I had tunnel vision, faced the opponents and ended up with a bronze medal.' Sutherland told the students that if you do your best and give 100 per cent to anything, nobody can ask any more of you. Hard work, dedication, sacrifice and 'dream" were all part of the achievement, and 'it ain"t over!' 'I hope to turn professional over the next few months, and a childhood dream is to bring a world title belt back to Ireland and here,' he told them, joking that they"ll probably be well finished school by then. Fittingly, the school choir saw him off to the backing of 'Something Inside So Strong".