But when her hand was raised in triumph, the reaction back home went to another dimension. The power of gold took over. In sport, as in life, silver is nice but gold is mythological. In mankind’s history, gold is legend, it is fortune, it is power, it is love and it is war. And in sport, Olympic gold is the ultimate crown, the lord of the rings, the shining city on a hill.

If the medals are allocated by fractions of difference, a chasm opens up between silver and gold when they are awarded. It opens up, not necessarily in the eyes of the wearers, but in the eyes of the beholders. We in Ireland were the beholders of Harrington’s gold and we were transfixed by the image. We thought that silver would be marvellous until we were dazzled by the sight of the gold. It transformed our response to its wearer. We were touched by gold fever in the aftermath. A sort of happy delirium took hold. Kellie went from silver star to gold superstar.

The achievement, like the metal itself, will never lose its lustre. But the power of Olympic gold is largely mythic, mostly symbolic. The medals for the Tokyo Olympiad, after all, are gold-plated silver: six grams of actual gold, 550 grams of silver. A report for NBC in America calculated that the metallic value of the medal would be around $820 at current commodity prices.

Obviously the market value of an Olympic gold medal is academic to Harrington and presumably every recipient. One would hope it will always remain so. Long-retired athletes and footballers having to sell their medals and trophies for money is one of the sadder tales in sport. But the long afterlife of a hero back on civvy street can be as challenging for them as it is for the ordinary citizen trying to make a living.

Harrington has said she will return to her beloved part-time job with the household staff in St Vincent’s Hospital, Fairview, when she’s had time to rest and recuperate. Her heart is with the patients there.

But at some stage, sooner rather than later, she will have to decide how best to leverage her gold medal into money in the bank. Here there is a chasm too, between what she has achieved and what she can earn. There is no automatic connection. If there is any justice in commercial economics, Harrington of all people should be enabled to bridge that gap. “Gold is money. Everything else is credit,” said the banking tycoon JP Morgan. But Olympic gold isn’t money if you’re an amateur athlete in a minority sport in a tiny country.

She has an agent, David McHugh of Line Up Sports, a Dublin-based company that has on its books a string of rugby internationals along with others such as Aidan O’Shea of Mayo and the O’Donovan rowing brothers. She has a number of sponsors, such as FBD Insurance, Base Pizza, McSport, the National Dairy Council, Linders Motor Group and Dublin City Council. Good on them, for stumping up a bit of support when it was presumably neither popular nor profitable. That is usually the time when it’s needed most.

Harrington, however, is mainstream now. She has transcended her sport. The Olympic champion has vaulted into the national consciousness. She is one of the most famous people in Ireland right now. It seems that she has a restless, searching mind, and when she arrived back into Dublin airport last Tuesday for the start of the media onslaught, she was already questioning what was happening to her. Fame? “What is fame?” she mused at one point. “I’m not a fame-hogger or anything like that. That’s not me. I’m all about humility. You can be famous and be a bit of a you-know-what.”

Only the famous can really answer that question, but affluence does seem to go hand in hand with it. In other words, at the more vulgar end of the equation, fame is money — or appears to be, at any rate. Harrington’s currency is not the gold medal itself but the fame that radiates out from its core, like a solar disc around her neck. The heat from it will cool in the coming months and years as the Olympic cycle enters its long doldrums period before Paris 2024 starts to emerge on the horizon.

Everything about Harrington suggests she is not materialistic. But she is a sensible person. Now 31, she has a future to think about with her partner Mandy. It would not be in the least bit materialistic to desire a house to call home, a nice car and a comfortable lifestyle. Those would be modest ambitions, given the scale or her achievement.

Attaining them might involve gigs: personal appearances at various functions, corporate and popular, to press the flesh, stand in for photos and say a few words. In return for which, a solid few noughts in the bank account. One imagines these gigs involve a fairly high bullshit quotient. She might just have to offer it up and think of Ireland. It beats getting punched in the face for a living, one presumes.

This of course is the other avenue open to her: turning pro. The ongoing hyperbole about Katie Taylor’s successes in the professional game tends to obscure the fact that the female side of the industry is still only earning peanuts. Women’s pro boxing remains in its infancy. There is currently no crock of gold waiting to be mined here.

Billy Walsh has been coaching America’s best amateurs since 2015, when the IABA allowed him to leave Irish boxing (“We have 20 coaches that can do [his] job.”) He was a guest on Newstalk’s Off The Ball show last Wednesday. Claressa Shields, one of his American protégées, won consecutive Olympic gold medals at London and Rio before turning pro. Asked about the prospect of Harrington turning professional, Walsh was cautionary. “You know, women’s boxing still” — he emphasised the still — “there’s not that much money out there. Claressa Shields had to revert to MMA. Her last fight was an MMA fight to try and get some money.” Shields basically could not find a fight in boxing that would generate a decent pay day.

Once any elite amateur turns professional, they essentially become self-employed. All the support structures that were laid on for free by government subvention are stripped away: the gym, the full-time coaching, the strength and conditioning, the medical, nutritional and psychological services. The costs from now on are taken from your bottom line. The manager and the promoter will be taking their cut too. The camaraderie of the national team is gone. You are basically on your own.

Asked about the possibility last week, Harrington was non-committal. “I’ll see,” she replied. “It’s either Paris or pro. It depends on the offers I’m going to get. We’ll see what offers come my way and I’ll do whatever’s best for me.” It was not the first time she’d mulled it over in her mind. Asked the same question by The Irish Times 12 months ago, she replied: “If the money was right, and I had a nice contract with so many fights, maybe a three-year contract, with very, very good money, then I would turn professional. But if it’s crap money, and a crap contract, then I’m not interested. I can stay amateur, I’ve no need for that. Less stress, more success.”

A big-money fight with Taylor was mooted repeatedly last week. Harrington didn’t seem interested. She is palpably a warm-hearted person but there seems to be a coldness between them — two of the most high-profile women in the history of Irish sport.

Taylor, one hopes, has her money made. Equally one hopes that Harrington will emulate her in that regard too. She could conceivably do it as an amateur, if the corporate sponsorship machine with its penchant for the sporting market steps up to the plate. An advertising campaign that captures her humour and authenticity would be extremely popular, one would imagine.

“It is extraordinary,” wrote the maritime novelist William McFee, “how many emotional storms one may weather in safety if one is ballasted with ever so little gold.”

Six grams of gold is ever so little, but the medal it covers ought to generate for Harrington some financial ballast in the years ahead. She most certainly did not get into the fight game for money. But now that she’s there, and at the top, she may as well do some fighting in the money game while she’s at it. And, all going well, walk away with a handful of gold from that too.