If you are looking for a story of about resilience, determination and pure heart – then this Laois teenager has you covered.
Shane Allison, a 19-year-old from Ballybrittas, became a double world champion recently after recovering from a serious knee injury.
When we last heard from Shane, he was spending much of 2024 travelling around Europe competing in Taekwondo and kickboxing.
In March of that year, Shane became the KBI Kickboxing national champion in both -74kg Kick Light and -74kg Light Contact.
In April, he was crowned the ITF Taekwondo -75kg Sparring European Champion and captained the Team Sparring event where they became European Silver Medallists in Poland.
Both of these feats were achieved while he was preparing to sit his leaving cert in St Paul’s Monasterevin.
In August, Shane became WAKO Kickboxing -74kg Junior Kick Light World Champion in Budapest.
While in November, Shane became the ITA Taekwondo Irish Cup -75kg Sparring Senior National Champion.
And later that month, She attended Skill Striker where he battled to be the winner of the Super Welterweight Title.
But then in December last year, 12 months ago, disaster struck when Shane was competing in his first professional ring fight in Liverpool.
in the first 30 seconds, Shane felt a pop in his knee and while adrenaline pushed him on for another minute or so, he eventually had to pull out.
In the next couple of weeks with hospital visits and an MRI scan the worst outcome was confirmed – Shane had fully torn his ACL.
He underwent full ACL reconstruction surgery in January at the Sports Injury Clinic in Santry and from there it was a long road to recovery.
Shane was diligent in following all advise from his surgical and physio teams who had indicated that realistically it would be 12 months before he might return to a competitive level.
Shane, however, had set his sights on competing before the end of the year.
In November, Shane travelled to Bristol for a kickboxing Skill Striker event where he competed for a combined Super Welterweight and Middleweight Title.
It was a very tough fight where at the end of the second round it was a draw.
Shane gave it everything he had in the final round and made his comeback in style taking the combined titles.
The following week he competed at the ITA Taekwondo Irish Cup where although he picked up a fracture on his foot while competing, he went onto win taking the National -75kg Senior Sparring title.
This now secures his spot on the Taekwondo National Team to compete at the Europeans in Slovenia in April.
This, however, wasn’t the end for Shane as he was also part of the National Kickboxing Team and two weeks later, he flew out to Abu Dhabi to compete at the Wako Senior World Championships.
Having been away for 11 months due to his injury and this been his first time to compete as a senior at an international level, this was always going to be a huge test of his skill and endurance.
However, he didn’t just do it, he did it twice. Shane battled through round after round competing against top class athletes from Liechtenstein, Germany, Hungary, Great Britain, Egypt, Ukraine and Bulgaria to secure not one but two world titles in -74kg Kick Light and -74kg Light Contact.
Shane was also awarded with the Senior Male Competitor of the tournament in recognition of the significance of his achievement in winning two world champion titles.
If ever there was a way to set down a mark in returning to compete after such a tough injury, we think it is fair to say that Shane knocked it out of the park.
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