Olympic champion Kellie Harrington has said that in order for the younger generation to follow in her triumphant footsteps, boxing clubs and youth clubs must receive funding.
Harrington acknowledged that her inspirational path towards Olympic success will have prompted many youngsters to take up boxing, and said that to be the catalyst for future success would be 'incredible'.
She said: "Imagine if I'm sitting somewhere in my 60's and I turn on the telly and see a female boxing in an Olympic Games?
"Imagine if they turned around and said 'ah, this started back in 2021 when Kellie Harrington won a gold medal' - that would be incredible," she said.
Ever the modest and level-headed athlete, she moved on quickly to outlining how future success stories need greater facilitation by way of a further emphasis on funding.
She said: "We are going to get a lot more people through the doors of boxing clubs, but we also need a lot more funding to be able to facilitate that.
"Some of the facilities in some boxing clubs are quite run down so we do need funding to go in there."
Harrington also pointed out that it was not just the boxing clubs that required extra funding, but also the youth clubs. She spent time during her teenage years as a member of a youth club and it was the guidance she received there that put her on the road to boxing success.
She continued: "We also need funding to go into the local youth clubs and places like that because for young teenagers, young kids coming up, if they're troubled a lot of the time they will end up in a youth club and when I was in a youth club I wanted to get into boxing and they helped me.
"They took someone up from Docklands to speak to us about boxing. They help you find your pathway from outside of the youth club so we do need money to go into that.
"This needs to be the start of something big, particularly for boxing because we have been hit really, really badly with this Covid situation.
"Clubs haven't been opened back up fully and the funding hasn't been there.
"Some clubs have closed down because they can't pay the bills because members aren't coming through the doors.
"It's better [money] going into the boxing clubs, the youth clubs and the sports clubs than going some of the places that it does go to.
"Let's get money into something more fundamental."
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