Showing, boxing – they both mean a lot to me. The best part of showing is taking part. It takes months of training, same as with boxing, to get a pony trained for shows. You can’t just decide the night before that you want to go to a show the next day.

The shows finish in September, that’s when the boxing training starts, so it all fits perfectly. And school too. I’m in Leaving Cert year in Colaiste Colm Chille in Inverin so it’s a big year coming up. I’m hoping to get enough points to do Veterinary Nursing in Letterkenny. I don’t mind school but I’d rather be at the ponies.

My dad Padraic had ponies nearly all his life, then as the years started to go on, he got into showing and keeping stallions. We have two now; Cornarone Hazy Lad and our younger stallion is Brandon Johnny. Hazy Lad’s biggest win was at the Champion of Champions show at Roundstone in 2015 when he was champion, he had 15 wins that year.

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MY IDOL

There’s always been ponies around the house but I didn’t start boxing until I was 12 years old. It’s all to do with Katie Taylor, she’s my idol since she won a gold medal at the London Olympics. That win boosted the interest in women’s boxing. I’ve met her once, down at the University of Limerick when I was boxing and got a picture with her.

Over Christmas we watched Rocky Ros Muc, about Sean Mannion the Ros Muc-born boxer in Boston. Even though he didn’t bring home that world title, for a man from Connemara to go that far was a serious achievement. Dad used to box, so did my older brother Brian. Dad coaches myself and my little brother Padraic.

There’s four in our family, I’m the second oldest and I have a younger sister Jayne. Mum’s [Brid] not a horsey person but she always supports me.

Two years ago, the boys and girls from the boxing club in Costello went to Boston for the first neighbourhood boxing match, TG4 was there too. It was held in City Hall Plaza, right outside the office of Marty Walsh, the first Irish-American mayor of Boston. It was my first time to go to America.

The first year I started boxing, I won the county title and Connacht title but got beaten in the All-Ireland final; the second year it was the same. And then the next year I won my All-Ireland title, so it was third time lucky.

All those All-Irelands were held in the National Stadium in Dublin, where I’ll be this Saturday for the All-Ireland semi-final. If I win this, I go through to the final the following week so I’ve been training all over Christmas. The training is Monday right through to Sunday - your fitness has to be 100%.

TWO ALL-IRELANDS

There’s always great banter at shows, at first people didn’t know I was into boxing too. Now they take a great interest; ‘Any fights lately?’ or ‘Did you knock anyone out?!’ I definitely get great support from the other Connemara owners.

I started three years ago with the High Performance training programme in Dublin. Yes, I missed one day training last September when I won the All-Ireland final with Glencovitt April, it was the second All-Ireland she won last year and she’s been so lucky for me. April was bred up in Ballybofey by John Crawford and she’s by Canal Fred.

We had another by him Linsfort Glencovitt Breeze and her temperament is unreal too. With their temperament, the Connemara is a real children’s pony and Padraic, my younger brother, shows her in young handler classes. She’d never let us down and she’s been so lucky.

I won the young handler at Clifden once, there were some celebrations then. Words couldn’t explain how happy I was to win two All-Irelands last year. We we got pulled in first but I wasn’t too sure, sometimes you can get knocked down the line. I was absolutely delighted when April won – if I’d got second or third I’d have been delighted.

Then the icing on the cake was to win her second All-Ireland in Ballinasloe. She’s four now and the plan is to cover her with Hazy Lad and hopefully show her in the future with her foal.

Roisin Gannon was in conversation with Susan Finnerty.