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.
Darren Sutherland didn’t just win a bronze medal at those Olympic Games, one of only 12 Irish boxers to come home from international sport’s greatest tournament with proof of his class. He also won the hearts and the respect of the nation.
Everything Sutherland did in and around Olympic time last year smacked of a class act, smacked of a young man who knew exactly where he was going with his life.
He told us before he flew to Beijing that he would be turning pro as soon as the final bell sounded on his Olympic Games.
He told us when he got to China that he would quit the amateur ranks with a medal around his neck. He was right on both fronts.
Sutherland, those who know such things continually told us in China, had a style best suited to the paid profession, but that didn’t stop him stamping his class on the Olympics.
He was brilliant in his first two fights, doing exactly what he had to do to see off Nabil Kassel from Algeria and world silver medalist Alfonso Branco from Venezuela en route to the semifinals.
Dazzler, as he liked to be known, was guaranteed a bronze medal at least when he stepped into the ring against Britain’s James Degale for what turned out to be his last amateur contest and his fifth last in all last August.
He was favorite that night, having powered his way to a knock-out win over Kassel in the second round and hammered Blanco 11-1 on points in the quarters, but there was to be no repeat of the fairytale against the arrogant Degale.
In the semifinal Sutherland was prepared to sit back and let the Englishman take the initiative, a tactic that seemed strange to say the least as we sat at ringside.
It was also a tactic that backfired. Degale won comfortably by 10 points to three on the computerized scoring system, and we expected to meet a distraught Sutherland at the post-match press conference deep in the dungeons of that fine stadium.
Imagine our surprise then when Sutherland bounded in with a smile as wide as the Liffey itself.
Asked why he was happy in defeat, his logic was a simple one. Always a man who lived for the moment, he was determined that he was going to enjoy the moment he won an Olympic medal.
There were to be no recriminations for Sutherland that night, no regrets and no remorse. He was immensely proud that he was bringing a bronze medal home to Ireland, immensely proud when they raised the Tricolor in his honor at the medal ceremony the following Saturday.
Within months Sutherland had accepted an offer from Dublin-born and London based promoter Frank Maloney to turn pro.
Within minutes of their first press conference Sutherland was proclaiming himself to be a future world champion and Maloney was trying, in vain it must be said, to persuade his man to take it one step at a time. It was always like that for the four professional fights he enjoyed, four fights he won.
Just last February I spent over an hour in Darren’s company in a Dublin hotel. He was, as always, great value for money as an interviewee.
He was full of the joys of life, full of hope and optimism, full of optimistic talk from a young man who clearly believed he would talk the talk and walk the walk.
Both Darren and Maloney spoke that day of bringing their roadshow to America next year, spreading the faith in New York and Boston and Philadelphia, giving the Irish American audience a new hero as they await the second coming of John Duddy and Andy Lee.
Now you will never get the chance to see Sutherland in the Madison Square Garden or in the MGM in Las Vegas, in the great boxing arenas he was born to thrill.
His death on Monday, sadly at his own hands, is an Irish sporting tragedy, and one that none of us foresaw. How could anyone have known that a kid with the world at his feet could feel so low as to take his own life?
On Tuesday evening, as I write this column, those who knew Darren Sutherland far better than I ever did were still at a loss to explain it all.
As with most suicides, I fear we will never know the real reason why Frank Maloney opened the door of his fighter’s apartment in South London on Monday afternoon and found his man dead.
Darren has probably taken the answer to the biggest question of his life to the grave with him, and all we can do now is turn our thoughts and our prayers to his mother, father and his sisters who are currently grieving him at their Navan home.
They were the ones who welcomed him back with open arms from China last year. They were ones who led the bon voyage calls when he departed for London last autumn.
They are the ones who will hurt the most now as Irish sport comes to grips with the untimely death of a world champion in the making.
On Darren’s Bebo page the tagline still reads: “Thanks for all the support, aim for the stars.”
Those of a religious persuasion can only hope Darren Sutherland is closer to the stars than ever now, in a place called heaven where no further pain can come his way.
In the meantime, all we can do is pray for his soul and thank him for the memories. They were few but they were precious.
HERO OF THE WEEK
HE’S gone now, but it is only right that Irish sport remembers Darren Sutherland as a great sportsman, a magical Olympian and a fine human being. Sport is not a matter of life or death at a time like this, so to compare anything else that happened in Irish sport this week, good or bad, to the loss of a young sportsman would be an insult to his memory. May he rest in peace.