UNDER A RECENT Instagram training clip of Irish heavyweight Jack Marley, no less than Kellie Harrington chimed in for the comments, writing, ‘Can see big changes in you since the Olympics. Jack 2.0 coming up.’

Ask the man himself about it and his natural bashfulness kicks in.

“Yeah, it’s just about getting 1% better every day. I don’t know what Kelly meant by that, either!” he says.

“I just feel like I’m trying to add 1% better every day and not making huge changes, but just improving on what I’m good at already.”

This week, he will head for Liverpool and the World Boxing Championships. Mercifully, and this is rare enough, he sees a huge advantage other than perhaps having something of a travelling support coming along.

“The support doesn’t really bother me. But the two main positives are the same climate and the same time difference, which is a blessing. We don’t have to really aclimatise in either time or weather, which is great. So, it’s just like boxing in Ireland.”

Last summer, the Monkstown BC man was the first Irish heavyweight boxer at the Olympics since Cathal O’Grady at Atlanta in 1996. Reaching the quarter-final, he was one bout short of a medal and lost 4-1 to the Asian champion from Tajikistan, though he gave a stirring account of himself.

“It was tough living in the medal fight, just being so close to the podium,” he reflects.

“But yeah, it adds fuel to the fire, and it was also just a realisation of where and what I can achieve. Just sort of getting so close in your first Olympic Games.

“It was obviously an immediate reaction of disappointment. But then once you sit back and take it all in and realise that when you look at it as a Games as a whole, and an Olympic cycle as a whole, I was happy on the outcome of the four years.”

The year before, his European Games silver medal made him Ireland’s first medallist of any sort since Gearóid Ó Colmáin 76 years previous.

This now, however, is Year One of the four-year Olympic cycle ahead of Los Angeles 2028. There has been some downtime since Paris 2024, but not too much.

“It’s very easy, like, because you’re in a bubble for so long, and then when you’re out of the bubble. It just takes a few days to come around. You’re back with your friends and your family, and you’re back to seeing everyone. And that’s the that’s the best part of it.

“It’s pure (life in The Olympics). A lot of people in the village, they all have the same aspirations and the same goals, which is amazing and yeah, we were pretty dialled in at the Olympics. So we didn’t go wandering much, or we didn’t take a look around the village as much as we should, but we were just locked in and focused on what we had to do.”

The workload is ramping up, bit by bit since the downtime after Paris. He had a ten-day camp in Sheffield recently with the boxers of Great Britain and ten other nations. There’s been a camp in Bulgaria also and two tournaments thrown into the mix.

“If it was like a year before Olympics or Olympic qualifiers, yeah, I’d be a bit worried,” says Marley.

“But considering it’s the first year of an Olympic cycle, I think it’s ideal. It’s perfect. Just not too many miles on the clock.”

The sparring was a test, for sure.

“It’s the same as always. You’re going to tick all the boxes. You are going to be in with strong lads, you’re going to be in with boxers. You’re going to be in with counter punchers. It’s just about ticking all the boxes at the right time before a big tournament like this.”

Irish Olympic boxer Jack Marley is a brand ambassador for Chadwicks, Ireland’s leading builders’ provider.