There is a saying that masterpieces are accidents of beauty. So maybe Chicago was the accident that saved them. Two weeks after they returned from those World Championships, Gary Keegan faced an edgy Central Council meeting of the Irish Amateur Boxing Association (IABA). A voice in the room began calling for his head.

Keegan swallowed hard and waited to hear a few coalescing voices. None came. There was no appetite for bloodshed, just a doubt that ached like rheumatism. One delegate suggested parking things until the Olympic qualification tournaments had completed. It wasn't so much a vote of confidence as a suspended execution.

The first week back, he had sent the whole of the High Performance staff away on holiday. Directly opposite Keegan's desk, he kept a white board on which the entire year's schedule was written. One morning, sitting above the silent gym, he scrubbed the board clean.

The future was a blank page.

Chicago decanted such spleen they might easily have buckled. Budgets and work-practices came under fire. For all the investment, only Paddy Barnes had booked a ticket to Beijing. They were depicted as dilettantes, spinning the illusion of purpose.

Ireland's Sports Council's funding of the programme had grown incrementally since 2003. Now some were asking questions, others just turning their backs.

"My biggest fear was not for my job," remembers Keegan now.

"My biggest fear was for the system and the programme. Because that's what supports the boxers. And I was afraid that that might be pulled down.

"Everything was being questioned but, hand on heart, I never felt I was under pressure. Because we always believed that we were in this battle alone. The team was a very tight unit. We were looking at our mistakes and our frailties. And, as long as we were doing that, we knew we were looking at the solutions too."

The rain pours down on Beijing from a heavy, pewter sky. The streets are swollen rivers. Today, three Irish boxers will go to the east of this city and fight for places in Olympic finals. Already, the three are medallists.

All week, they've been killing time maybe 400 yards from here, behind the high walls of the Olympic village. Cocooned from the din of home where, it seems, the discredited, old five-ringed flame has suddenly found fresh lustre.

Next week, there will be homecomings and -- beyond -- almost certainly an appearance on the season-opening The Late Late Show. Keegan won't be at either. He is going home alone and, on arrival, he intends flying straight back out to America with his children.

Not to Chicago, mind.

Down in the village, Billy Walsh and Zaur Antia gather up the threads of a beautiful story now. Walsh, Antia and Keegan are all of the same vintage and, maybe by extension, mindset. They've carried this thing together.

When Keegan set up the programme in '03, he had two fundamental priorities. One, it had to be Irish-led. Two, it had to reference the highest of European standards. That's where Billy and Zaur came in.

Walsh was a seven-time Irish boxing champion with a coach's eye and a fighter's empathy. Antia came from Georgia, where he won the national title six times. Both were welterweights.

This week, they talked of how, just recently, they realised their paths must have crossed at a tournament in Sweden in '96, Antia as Georgian coach, Walsh as an old fighter trying to make the Games in Atlanta.

There is a subtle chemistry between them. A tightness articulated through little glances and gestures. When Antia arrived in Ireland five years ago, he had no English. Not a single word. But he made himself understood with his hands.

Now they are bonded by the sharing of a profound journey.

Walsh tells a story to frame the business pending. To find a context for this Olympic achievement, it is best perhaps to reference where it started. For the first year of the Programme, Keegan pestered the French federation to allow his team travel over to a training camp.

Habitually, his emails were met with Gallic shrugs. 'Sorry, mon ami, no interest'. Eventually, against their better instincts, the French relented. This Irishman was stubborn.

So Keegan and Walsh and Antia brought an Irish team to the Institute of Sport and Physical Education in Paris and set their minds to leaving behind a good impression. They were first in the gym every morning. They sparred with striking discipline and zeal. They went to their beds early.

Eventually, the French Director of High Performance decided to come clean. His ambivalence had been rooted in Irish boxing's relationship with drink. He had not wanted his academy infected.

Now the French invited the Irish to everything.

Walsh would have known that old, wayward culture. He fought for Ireland at the '88 Games in Seoul and he has a colourful recall of the pre-Olympic training camp. Six had qualified and they were dispatched off Castlecove on the Ring of Kerry to effectively manage their own preparation for Korea.

"Beautiful place," recalls Billy, a sparkle in his eyes. "We used run on Derrynane beach in the morning, at the back of Daniel O'Connell's house.

"That was the only thing I felt proud about, going by that house every morning. But we were left to prepare on our own, spar with each other. Sure we were mates, were never going to kill each other. You know what I mean, you're not going to push."

Billy is adamant that Keegan and the High Performance programme have "changed the culture of Irish boxing".

You won't, of course, hear or read that in any official Olympic records of Beijing '08. Because, for the OCI, Keegan does not exist. Actually, for many in the IABA too, he seems to be a rumour.

No matter, Ireland has three boxers in the last four of the Olympic Games.

Some time ago, they circulated a questionnaire in the gym and, almost to a man, the boxers declared a desire to be "famous". Their prayer is answered.

"It's nice for them," says Billy. "The training they do, the commitment they put in. Giving up their lives, their education. Putting everything on hold to try and be an Olympian and do well out of it."

Billy followed pretty much the same flame.

But he lost his only fight in Seoul and, coming from Wexford, he learnt to live with the curse of Kilkenny hurlers. He played in two Leinster minor hurling finals and remembers the '81 game like it was yesterday's burglary.

"Five points up with six minutes to go, beaten by a point," he says. "Walsh was playing wing-back. "Threw my hurley down that day and said 'I'm going to go to the Olympic Games, f**k this!'"

So he knows that sport can bring you to bad places. But he knows, too, that those places can define men.

Of Chicago, he says simply: "If you don't take a risk, you don't achieve and we've been taking risks for the last five years. We failed on a number of occasions, we went down in the gutter. And that's probably what's made us what we are now.

"We've learnt from it. We're continuously learning."

Maybe above all the things they learnt was not to over-coach a boxer. To remember that empowerment came from responsibility, not structure. After Chicago, they took the boxers to Donegal and ran them across the Barnesmore Gap. Then they invited them to talk. And, in a sense, the talking cleared the air like thunder.

So Darren Sutherland, Paddy Barnes and Kenny Egan go climb a rainbow now. Darren and Kenny face British opponents.

On Wednesday night last, Walsh bumped into the British manager, Terry Edwards. "Settle for one each maybe Billy?" grinned Edwards.

"Nah," said Walsh. "Think we'll take our chances."