Darren Sutherland: A short but brilliant life

Cathal Dervan

Published Wednesday, September 16, 2009, 1:16 PM

Updated Friday, September 18, 2009, 11:31 AM

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Darren Sutherland

Story / 'Abandonded' Irish boxer Darren Sutherland was booked in for therapy session / Click here
Story / Irish Olympic champion boxer Darren Sutherland takes his own life / Click here
Story / Tributes pour in for Darren Sutherland / Click here

So many questions and so few answers. Darren Sutherland is dead, and his family is preparing to bring his body home to Navan from London.

Nobody knows why. Nobody can know why. Nobody will probably ever know why he is gone from this earth at the age of 27, gone with so much ahead of him.

Not so long ago the same Sutherland family bid their son and their brother a fond farewell as he set sail for the English capital with an Olympic bronze medal around his neck and a head full of dreams.

He was always a good man for the dreams. At 16 he invited himself onto the set of Brendan O’Carroll’s Sparrow’s Trap movie just to meet the legendary boxing trainer Brendan Ingle.

Within a year he was living in Ingle’s backyard, training with a stable of professional boxers that included Prince Nazeem Hamed and sampling life at the top.

It wasn’t to be in Sheffield for Sutherland, however. Disillusioned at the slow progress his career was making under the Ingle influence, he came home to Dublin, back to the St. Savours club that had introduced him to boxing as a gangly teenager.

Back home with his Irish mother Linda and his West Indian father Tony, Darren re-evaluated his life. His pro dream was shattered by that experience in the north of England, but not his love for boxing.

At 20 he went back to school, to St. Peter’s College in Dunboyne when he became just one of the kids again. He kept his head, kept that head in the books, worked hard and trained hard.

A sports science degree at Dublin City University came calling. So did three national titles, two European Union belts and then an horrific eye injury in a B international between Ireland and Russia at the National Stadium in 2006.

A stray Russian thumb pushed Sutherland’s eye so far into his socket that night that he required emergency surgery at Dublin’s Eye and Ear hospital.

He lay bolted to a bed as a surgeon warned he might never see out of the eye again, never mind box again. Sutherland shook his head and vowed to prove the medics wrong. He did.

Within two years he was stood in front of us in the bowels of the Worker’s Gymnasium in Beijing, host venue to the boxing tournament at the 2008 Olympic Games and home to so many Irish heroes for two glorious weeks.

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Irish sport is popular and widespread. Levels of participation and spectating are high on the island of Ireland. Throughout the country a wide variety of Irish sports are played, the most popular being Gaelic games (such as Gaelic football, hurling and camogie), soccer, rugby union and boxing. By attendance figures Gaelic football and hurling are by far the most popular sports in Ireland, (34% of total attendances at sports events being to football and 23% to hurling), while golf and soccer (including 5-a-side) are the most played at 17% of the population each. Many Irish sports, such as boxing, cricket, rugby union, Gaelic football and hurling, are organized in an all-island basis, with a single team representing Ireland in international competitions. Other Irish sports, such as Association Football, have separate organizing bodies in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. At the Olympics, a person from Northern Ireland can choose to represent either Ireland or Great Britain. The various GAA discipline finals are easily the largest sporting events regularly held in Ireland, in both terms of attendance and media coverage. The biggest national sporting event in Ireland is the final of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship, held annually in Croke Park in September. It usually attracts a sell out crowd of 82,500 to Croke Park. Many of the matches in the championship attract crowds of 50,000, depending on who is playing. Aside from the GAA, the biggest multi-sport event held in Ireland regularly is the Community Games. The games are organized every year from a local level, where hundreds of thousands of young people compete in different disciplines such as athletics, swimming, cycling etc., in the first half of the year. Winners progress to county level, and then to the Community Games finals. One of the biggest international Irish sport events is international Association Football. The Republic's national team has punched above its weight in recent years, qualifying for the 2002 World Cup, and performed well against such teams as Brazil and Portugal. In rugby union, Ireland's national team has been ranked in the top five teams regularly over the last few years, and has produced major stars such as Keith Wood and Brian O'Driscoll. In golf, Ireland is home to several top golfers such as Padraig Harrington.

Darren Sutherland: A short but brilliant life

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