Boxing
Taylor started boxing (coached by her father Peter himself a successful amateur boxer) in 1998, aged 12.
Her first noteworthy success was at the 2005 European Amateur Championships, in Tønsberg, Norway. She won the gold medal, defeating Eva Wahlström of Finland in the final of the 60 kg lightweight class. Later that year, at the World Amateur Championships in Podolsk, Russia, Taylor advanced to the quarter-finals in the 60 kg weight class.
At the 2006 European Amateur Championships in Warsaw, Poland, Taylor won her second successive gold medal by stopping reigning world champion Tatiana Chalaya of Russia, also collecting the tournament's Best Boxer award. At that year's World Amateur Championships, contested in New Delhi, India, Taylor became Ireland's first World Champion, defeating Chalaya again in the semi-final and then Annabella Farias of Argentina in the 60 kg final.
In 2007, she won her third successive European Championship title in Denmark. In August 2008, she claimed her second consecutive Witch Cup gold medal in Hungary, following an inside-the-distance win in the 60 kg final against Wahlström.
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Famous quotes containing the word boxing:
“... to paint with oil paints for the first time ... is like trying to make something exquisitely accurate and microscopically clear out of mud pies with boxing gloves on.”
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing—for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it’s impossible not to see that your opponent is you.... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)