I'm setting timeframes in my mind for when it will actually click that I'm going to Beijing. I'm reckoning it will be a few weeks yet. Right after the fight you just go back to the dressing rooms and all the other fighters are in there and it just goes on as normal, so it's strange. It's strange as well because of the other guys with the Irish team that came here to qualify. Ken Egan and Darren Sutherland and Roy Sheehan were all expected to make it and it's a real pity they didn't but you can't think about anyone else for a minute at these events or you're in trouble.

I suppose I was well down people's lists coming here too.

But I have been unlucky. I won the nationals last year but then at the Europeans I was stopped in the first round of the first bout. The coaches went down to the doctor and she said there was a lot of grit in my eye. They thought it might have been the headguard but when they went down to the ring they found the referees had been going in and out for smokes and the canvas was covered in this grit. They had to stop the fighting and hoover the ring but it was too late for me and my retina and because of that people saw me as someone who could only perform on the national stage. It put me out of training for a month as well because the doctors didn't want me doing too much because it could cause more damage. But all the time I knew I could do something here in Chicago with a little bit of luck and it just shows that anything can happen.

For instance the guy who stopped me at those Europeans won a bronze on Friday here at the worlds so a lot of it is the luck of the draw.

It means the next year is going to be hectic but that's the way a boxer likes it. There were times though when nobody could see me here. I got into boxing through my cousins when I was about 11 but I was a brawler. All I wanted to do was get into the ring and get involved in a scrap. People were telling me that it wasn't boxing and my record said the same thing.

From the time I started, I lost my first 15 fights but I didn't care because I just wanted to get back into a ring again and get swinging. I was never going anywhere until I calmed down but gradually that happened. When things started to go well, and I started to use my speed to fight, I was brought to the Holy Family in Belfast. That was a huge honour and since I went there things have improved 100 per cent. The sparring is great, the coaching is great, even the history of the place makes you think. And people have now started reminding me I'm the fifth guy from the place to make the Olympics.

I called my parents after qualifying and it made up for all the effort they put in. I'm not on the high performance even half a year and training twice a day, it's not the sort of thing you can work full-time at as well. It takes massive dedication but it's not something employers want. My parents had to help me an awful lot during that time.

Getting me up and down to Dublin, paying my way, it was a massive strain on them and it can't have been easy. But having spoken to them, I'm beginning to think it has all been worthwhile. Paddy Barnes at the Olympics, a long way from the guy that lost his first 15 fights.