- Today hosts share long group hug with Harry Garside
- Garside’s Olympic dreams were crushed on Monday
- Garside felt he let the country down after his defeat
Aussie boxer Harry Garside has shared an extended group hug with Today hosts Karl Stefanovic and Sara Abo after his highly emotional reaction to his unexpected loss at the Paris Olympics.
Garside, 27, was unable to hide his heartbreak as his 20-year dream was crushed in just nine minutes on Monday night.
He fell to Hungary’s Richard Kovacs by unanimous decision in their round of 16 clash, a shock result given the Victorian won bronze in Tokyo and was targeting gold this time around.
The popular boxer had to cut short his media duties after leaving viewers concerned over his mindset in an uncomfortably raw TV appearance, having initially said he had let his country down.
‘I feel like a failure,’ Garside said in an interview straight after the bout.
‘It’s a wild sport, after three years for it to be over just like … I feel very numb, I didn’t envision this happening.’
Speaking earlier to Nine, Garside – who has been open about his mental health battles – made the worrying admission that he is concerned about the next few months as he comes to terms with his defeat.
‘I feel pretty numb right now but I feel the next month or two will be quite challenging, quite hard,’ he said.
Harry Garside shared his heartbreak in an uncomfortably raw interview after seeing his Olympics dream crushed at the first hurdle in Paris
Garside, Karl Stefanovic and Sara Abo shared a 10-second embrace on Tuesday morning as the Today hosts tried to dig him out of the funk he’s been in since the shock defeat
Appearing on the Today show on Tuesday, Garside seemed in much better spirits and says he wants to show young people that ‘failure is just part of life’ and it is our choice how he cope with it.
He said he had pretty low self-worth when he started on his boxing journey, but that’s changed.
‘The way you get self-worth, the way you get self-respect is how you treat other people,’ he said.
‘And it’s those little moments in the day when you help somebody with their shopping or you shake someone’s hand… or do something kind. That’s how you build self-worth.
He went on to say that he believes our mission in life is to find out who he is and that he is still on that journey.
At the end of the interview, Stefanovic said that his mum told him to give Garside a big hug, before he and Abo stood up and the three embraced for around 10 seconds as music played.
The Australian star was eliminated from the men’s boxing in the round of 16
Garside will stay in Paris and support the remainder of the 12-strong Aussie boxing contingent before contemplating his next move.
After Garside’s bout, Aussie big man Teremoana Teremoana became the first Australian to win a super heavyweight bout in Olympic history.
He stunned Ukranian Dmytro Lovchynskyi with a first-round knockout in their 92kg+ bout at the North Paris Arena.
He will now take on reigning Olympic champion Bakhodir Jalolov from Uzbekistan in the quarter-finals.
‘We’re here to win and I’m just glad I got it out of the way in the first round,’ Teremoana said.
‘I wasn’t planning to go for the knockout, I am confident in my strength, but the plan was to go out there and box, and I was landing a few clean punches and he was feeling it.
