Paul Kent: Harry Garside is a boxing talent like we’ve never seen before
Don’t let Harry Garside’s ever-present smile and stories of his ballet and fingernail painting fool you, this young man is as tough as they come writes, Paul Kent.
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Let the records show there has never been a fighter quite like Harry Garside.
It has nothing to do with the fast hands, Famechon had those. And the balanced feet dance under him much like they once danced under Rose.
Some greybeards insist he is reminiscent of Fenech, given the interest his Olympic moment created, a kind of launch pad, even if their stories are vastly different.
Johnny Lewis, the fight trainer who reneged on his plans for retirement to train Garside as a pro, says there is something about Garside that is unique and genuine and entirely engaging and, like it always does with Johnny, it goes well beyond first appearances and deep into character.
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Lewis was sitting at his favourite Erskineville cafe on Thursday with Garside smiling at the end of the table, listening to old stories about long forgotten games that used to be played across the street at Erskineville Oval.
Garside smiles all the time.
“Don’t ever lose that smile,” said Barry Wood, and looked at him a little perplexed, then smiled back. It is where he defaults.
The talk around the table was of next week’s fight, the one where Garside makes his debut on the Paul Gallen-Darcy Lussick undercard, and it briefly diverged into the lure of footballers finding the ring.
There is a stark difference between the sports, of course, although most footy players fancy themselves a spectacular chance if ever they decide the fight game might be more their thing.
As pros know, though, satin trunks don’t make a fighter and it usually takes just a few short rounds to prove it so.
At some point, though, Gallen has transitioned from footballer to boxer. The jury is still out for Lussick.
By way of making the point Wood recalled the day he played against Canterbury with Paul Hayward and a stink started and Hayward, a boxing champion all the way through his formative years, dropped three big opposition forwards with just the three short punches all that was required.
Garside smiled.
It was a quiet lunch, new stories sparking old memories.
For lunch Garside had a glass of sparkling water.
“The fighting is the fun part,” he said. “The dieting is the hard part.”
He easily passed by lunch and did not even shift in his seat when a custard dessert was plumped in front of him, on the house, with a teaspoon next to it.
He laughed at the idea that it was actually a temptation.
More than any other recreation, the fight game has always been the hurt game, and the key to it all is mental toughness.
Little did the chef know that Garside has been practising his mental toughness for years, and in the most unlikely of ways.
He challenges himself every month, a different challenge for the month, which was an idea that originated at what was called the Gold Medal Ready program, an Australian Institute of Sport initiative, several years before the Games and designed to train athletes to become comfortable with being uncomfortable.
So for three days one month he consumed nothing but black coffee. Another month he went 50 hours without speaking.
He live streamed himself reading poems. Held his breath for two-and-a-half minutes. Went a month without technology. Found himself at ballet school, went to an addiction meeting with no addiction, made a public reading, went on a date with a woman who could not speak English, rode a moped in a storm, dived off a 10m platform.
It is not an entirely new idea, but Garside has taken it to whole new levels.
When he painted his fingernails at the Games, for instance, much of Australia took notice, and some even cocked an eye, but all it was really about was about another experience outside his comfort zone while raising awareness for sexual equality.
Hey, what boxer hasn’t ever thought of that?
In his search for growth, which is daily, Garside was nailing them all, one after the other, until the first challenge in the month after the Games, when he failed to meditate for 12 hours.
He got four hours in when the demons of the Olympics got him. It was a rare kind of cruelty.
“I hadn’t fully debriefed everything and dealt with everything from the Olympics,” he says.
“The stuff in my brain was really challenging. There was a million different thoughts running through my head.”
Garside had spent 15 years dreaming of winning an Olympic gold medal and fell two wins short, returning with bronze after losing to eventual gold medallist Andy Cruz in the semi-finals.
“I felt embarrassed, to be honest,” he said. “He punched the shit out of me. I got outclassed.
“It’s a heartbreaking thing to have a dream as a kid and get that close to something.
“Two wins away …”
Those demons were finally rested Wednesday night when Garside was a guest at the NSW Olympic Gala dinner at Star casino.
It was the final exclamation mark on an amateur career that is now ended, where he will be reminded brutally so on Wednesday against Fijian Sachin Mudaliar, the Australasian champion, when he makes his pro debut.
Since moving to Sydney to train under Lewis, another great step outside his comfort zone, Garside has embraced the city life and what it offers with a kind wide-eyed wonder most young athletes, who read from the Book of Cool, try hard to disguise.
But Garside is not one for stereotypes. There is too much character inside to hide who he really is, or to be afraid of it.
Instead he smiles.
It was that smile as much as his brilliant talents that convinced Lewis to return to boxing and train Garside.
Now all Lewis wants is for Australia to get a chance to know him like they briefly did in Tokyo and to see that the blonde tips and the painted fingernails might be as strange a mix as you could imagine in a prize-fighter but they are also genuine gestures from an athlete who thinks deeper and differently than most.
The only changes Lewis is pushing, along with co-trainer Jayson Laing, are the subtle changes needed to convert from the amateur style to the professional style.
Sitting down a little more on his punches to deliver more power, looking to deliver more damage. Or standing closer in the pocket, always ready to exchange.
Garside knows it and understands it and pushes himself no differently than he did as an amateur, with his goals clearly marked.
“I’m only 24,” he said, “there’s no rush.
“But hopefully in the next few years I can get a ranking, get a world title, then hopefully after that I can unify the belts.”
It was the only moment, a brief one, that could have been scripted to stereotype.
Doesn’t make it less real, though.
* * * * *
PAT Cummins could not play the Adelaide Test because he was a close contact of a person in a restaurant where he was eating.
Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon ate at the same restaurant on the same night but could play.
The Newcastle Knights got sent home after players were exposed, the Wests Tigers shut down operations after a staffer tested positive and the Raiders have done the same.
What if they were scheduled to play this weekend, with competition points on offer?
Where it gets concerning is that the street tip from overseas is that Super League clubs are hiding Covid positives until they get through certain games, even if it means infecting opposition players, because the points on offer are so valuable.
It reminds me of the early days of random drug testing, where if clubs had a chance to get away with something they would, sending well-muscled players out on a road run about the time the testers appeared.
That the NRL has no hard and fast Covid protocols for next season - unlike in the NFL, say, where strict guidelines are stated and enforced - and so by leaving it to the club’s discretion they are leaving themselves open to accusations of unfairness.
The coaches will be the first ones blowing up when a player is quarantined while, across the halfway line, the opposition deems its player safe to play.
If the difference in seating is the difference between being allowed to play a Test what length will the leaguies go to seize the advantage?
It promises to be fascinating.
It all changes when points are on offer, as anybody is prepared to tell you in quiet conversations.
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Originally published as Paul Kent: Harry Garside is a boxing talent like we’ve never seen before
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