How Harry Garside overcame suicidal thoughts and his mother’s cancer battle to chase gold at the Paris Olympics

He was a boxing bronze medal hero at Tokyo. But Harry Garside is just lucky to be alive for the Paris Olympics after navigating 12 months from hell.

Harry Garside sits in his car and closes the door.

A broken man with a fatal plan, he slides the key into the ignition.

His hands are shaking, pulse racing.

Not so long ago, after winning Australia’s first Olympic boxing medal in 33 years at Tokyo, Garside, the cool cat with charisma, chutzpah and a 1000-kilowatt smile, was bursting with life.

Now, on Sunday, June 4, 2023, all he can think of is driving himself to a senseless death.

His foot rests against the accelerator. The cogs in his mind, always probing, always inquisitive, are turning.

High-speed suicide. Does he plough into a wall? Fly off a bridge? Hit a pole?

Harry Garside has detailed his battle with suicidal thoughts. Picture: Richard Dobson

Convinced this is it, his last rites, Garside quickly spares a thought for his loved ones. Brothers. Father. Mother.

The final figure delivers a lightning rod of reality. Kate Garside, loving mother of three boys, a brave cancer survivor. Hold on. This particular Sunday is her day. Mother’s Day. Garside pulls the key out of the ignition and sobs.

The mother’s son lives to fight another day. Thankfully, he is still here, fighting on in Paris, ready to launch his Olympic campaign on Monday, 13 months on from navigating the darkest chapter of his life.

“I have always been quite an extremist,” Garside says as he begins his quest for gold with a round-one clash against Hungary’s Richard Kovacs.

“I have had moments in my life where I have had that suicidal ideation.

“I feel things to the extreme. I find I’m often the happiest guy in the room or the darkest one in the room.

“Those dark thoughts … it’s something I’ve had to manage throughout my life, but last year was the closest I have ever been to actioning it.”

How close?

“Well, I was in my car,” he explains.

Garside with his mother Kate and father Shaun after his Tokyo bronze medal win.

“I was going to do something silly.

“I was basically going to drive my car into something and end it all.

“But the day was Mother’s Day and the thought of my mum having to be constantly reminded that her son took his life on Mother’s Day, the pain of that, that was the reason I didn’t do it.

“Looking back, I’m grateful I didn’t do it.

“Every human deserves to be here, every human deserves a chance to be happy.

“It took me a few days to find that perspective, but I’m glad I came out of the darkness.”

It was a darkness triggered by his shock arrest a month earlier following domestic-violence allegations levelled against Garside by his ex-partner Ashley Ruscoe.

Garside had just returned to Australia from his cameo on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here when he was greeted by police at Sydney airport.

From the jungle to a jail cell, Garside was living a nightmare.

And while the bronze medallist was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing, there was a time when he didn’t just fear for his life, but the end of his Paris Olympics campaign.

Few know the 27-year-old like his mother. Kate Garside insists her son would never hit a woman, but revelations of his near suicide shook her to the core.

Garside says his arrest at Sydney airport was one of his most humiliating moments.

“For Harry to tell me later how he was feeling (about taking his life), it was really upsetting,” says Kate, who arrived in Paris on Friday ahead of Garside’s first fight.

“He certainly didn’t present that to us, but behind closed doors, I think he was a scared little boy.

“I never believed for one second that Harry would assault a woman. I did ask him just in case but I didn’t believe it. Harry said no way.”

A court cleared Garside of assaulting Ruscoe after watching a 33-second video he recorded of an altercation.

Amid the explosive flashpoint, Garside ran to a bedroom, locked the door, fumbled around on his phone, held his nerve, then texted the video to his mum, a split-second judgement that saved his reputation and Paris campaign.

“I’m just glad I kept the video Harry sent me the night they argued,” Kate said.

“I saw the look in her eyes. I felt sick immediately.

“I put it on my hard drive at work and kept it. I’m glad I did because we wouldn’t have had any evidence otherwise.

“Without it, who knows if Harry would have been allowed to fight at these Olympics.”

Two days after Garside had planted the mental seeds for his suicide, he was cleared by police. The pieces fell into place. Justice had been served. The Olympic door was open again. It was a cathartic moment.

“Being arrested that day was rock bottom, it was just the most humiliating feeling,” he said.

“I felt like a little boy walking out of the airport with cameras in my face.

“I was heartbroken for a number of weeks while the charges were on me.

“I still have this weird sense. I don’t know if I’ve hit rock bottom fully because I’ve kind of numbed myself with wanting to win the Olympic gold medal in Paris. Because of that focus, I haven’t fully processed what went on with the police.

“After the Olympics I will have to address it emotionally, properly, and get through it.”

Compounding Garside’s pain has been his private family struggle. His older brother Josh did time in jail during a battle with drug addiction that put a strain on the tight-knit Garside family.

“There has been a couple of ordeals for Harry,” Kate said.

“His older brother went down the wrong track with drug taking and ended up in jail.

“Harry tried to fix that … for a long time, we all did, but it just didn’t work.

“Josh has been clean and sober now for three years. He is definitely on the right track and Harry has had a lot to do with that.

“Harry tried to do all sorts of things to make it right. He tried to be supportive to Josh. He tried to be angry, but he eventually realised that Josh was the only one who could do things himself and in order to get him back, he basically wiped him.

“But when Josh made the effort, Harry did, too, which was nice.”

The domestic-violence allegations cost Garside around $500,000 as sponsors abandoned him. Most have returned, but the scar tissue is tough to exfoliate.

“For Harry to be arrested and accused of assaulting a woman, that was revolting,” Kate says.

“I’m a mum of three boys and these false allegations against men happen, and it happens more often than not.

“I’m not saying domestic violence doesn’t happen against women, because we know it does, but as a mum I’m really angry that other women go to that extreme to get back at their ex-partners or partners.

“She told Harry, ‘They will only believe me because I’m the girl and you are a bloke’ … but I’m glad the truth prevailed.”

Grim news has often stalked Garside like one of his pugilistic opponents. As he basked in the afterglow of his bronze medal magic at Tokyo, Garside received a phone call from his mother.

Garside was rocked by his mother’s battle with breast cancer.

“I got diagnosed with breast cancer,” Kate said. “It came very much as a shock. I had a routine mammogram and they picked it up. I was travelling in South Australia with my husband and I got a call saying, ‘You have to come in, we think we’ve found something’.

“Harry was away in Sydney at the time. We told him, but I said don’t change your life because of this.

“I had chemotherapy and radiation. I needed a mastectomy. I’m on tablets and still will be for probably the next 10 years. I still have monthly blood tests and check-ups, I lost a kidney over it, too, so it’s been a tough period for us all.”

Garside concedes he is a sensitive soul with layers of complexity. He has worn dresses, painted his fingernails to discover his “feminine energy”, dabbled in ballet and is the offspring of a psychic (mum Kate) and roof tiler (father Shaun).

Winning bronze in Tokyo shot Garside to national prominence. But as he returns to Paris for his second Games, the three-year journey has taught him to balance external validation and internal acceptance. Fame was a gateway to social-media abuse.

“After the last Olympics, I was on the biggest high. Social media was feeding my ego,” he said.

“You get all this validation and I got to a point where I was consumed by it.

“I had the awareness to get someone to take over my social media because I don’t think it’s natural to have 100,000 people being able to comment on your life at any point in time.

“I mostly get positive comments, but even if you read 99 per cent positive comments about yourself, you start to think you’re a legend when you’re not.

“You’re just human.”

Adds Kate: “Harry says he sometimes feels like a chameleon. He can read a room very well. He can put on a certain persona in front of particular people. At home he is different to what he is in the media.

“I think Harry’s confusion is that he doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life and where boxing is going to take him.

“He is in a bit of limbo.”

Garside has come through his darkest days to clinch a second Olympics in Paris. Picture: Adam Head.

Garside was desperate to win gold at these Games he offered to cut off his left thumb after surgery on his hand in March. Wisely, the surgeon scuppered that proposal, pointing out the recovery period for amputation is even longer, but for Garside, as always, the true battle is with his mind.

As he spoke with this masthead in recent days, Garside took swigs from a water bottle. He has carried it everywhere for more than a year. The bottle features two pieces of sticking plaster. In black ink are the words: “I am an Olympic Gold medallist. I am the man in the arena.”

The latter is a line inspired by former US president Theodore Roosevelt; positive messaging to help him not only overcome the haters, but his own athletic demons as he chases a golden feat no man has achieved in Australia’s 100-year boxing history at the Olympics.

“It’s an affirmation thing,” he said. “Someone once said to me you are 70 per cent water and if you drink the words on your drink bottle, you consume it and become it.

“So I’m telling myself I am a gold medallist and I’m the man in the arena.

“Before the last Olympics, no-one knew who I was and no-one cared. Now on social media people can get at you and abuse you, but I’m the man in the arena, I’m the one who is getting in there and facing my fears.

“I’m facing the front of embarrassment but I’m also prepared to be brave enough to get that triumph.

“I like to say there’s two wolves inside you. A good wolf that believes you can win a gold medal and a bad wolf that thinks I’m not worthy enough.

“Which wolf is the loudest is the one you feed the most … I’m trying to feed the good wolf that believes I can.”