Boxing champion Nicola Adams on women's boxing, making history and dancing on Strictly

“It was the best feeling ever,” 40-year-old Adams reflects. “All those years of hard work and trying to get women’s boxing into the Olympics to finally get that moment and then for it to be in London in your home country and to go and win a gold medal, it was an unbelievable feeling.

“To have Team GB win the first ever gold,l it was like ‘yes this is what it’s all about’…It just feels absolutely amazing to think that was the first big step for female boxing. And to think that I was part of that is unbelievable.”

Adams, who spent her early childhood years growing up on a council estate Leeds’s East End Park, broke down pretty much every barrier on her way to stardom in the ring. She will share her incredible journey in an inspirational hometown talk in May, charting her career in the ring and looking ahead to what is next on the cards for a woman who has made history on more than one occasion.

Adams’ first taste of boxing was an inadvertent date with destiny. Then aged 12, she and her brother were taken to an after-school boxing session by their mother, who was unable to get a babysitter for the pair whilst she attended an aerobics class. “I joined in, put the gloves on, got running around with the other kids and I thought it was awesome. It wasn’t something I would have chosen to do otherwise so it just fell on my lap basically.”

Her first bout was in a working men’s club at the age of 13 but it then took Adams several years to find her next opponent. In 2001, she became the first female boxer to represent England and two years later she became English amateur champion for the first time.

But her journey was an uphill struggle, fighting in a sport which, for years, did not accept women. A major breakthrough for female boxers in Britain had come in 1996 when the Amateur Boxing Association of England lifted its 116-year ban and allowed women to compete and join its affiliated clubs. On an international level, the first European Cup for Women took place in 1999, with the first ever World Championship held two years later.

It was still a male-dominated sport and Adams would find herself on the receiving end of sexist comments - ‘women belong in the kitchen, why don’t you take up tennis, you’re too pretty to box’.

The more she was fed the narrative of ‘women can’t box’, the more motivated she became. But it was far from easy. “There was hardly any funding for the women,” she recalls. “We’d get the odd training camp here and there and if we went away to a tournament we’d have the bare minimum. Sometimes we had to even share competition kit to get to the ring.

“We didn’t get the recognition for the things we achieved. We were almost like second class citizens really…And you did feel that pressure. Whenever I went away to a tournament, I always had to perform. If we went away and didn’t win any medals, it would be like ‘oh well we didn’t expect anything from you guys anyway’. We’d win and ask for more funding but the bar would always go a bit higher.”

“It felt like a never ending battle every time you woke up - a battle to get funding, a battle to get coaches to actually coach female boxers,” she adds. “It was really hard. There were times I thought ‘why don’t I do something a bit easier that already has funding and backing?’ But I love boxing so much and I didn’t want to let it go. I knew that I was talented and I knew that when it did become an Olympic sport, I was capable of winning a gold medal.”

In 2012, she instantly became a role model, having realised her dream in front of millions. Some may say she was naive, but Adams did not expect her life to change the way it did. She topped the list of The Independent’s 101 most influential LGBT people in Britain for that year and was appointed MBE in the 2013 New Year Honours, and later made Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2017 for her services to boxing.

“I didn’t think my life was going to change that much after winning a gold medal,” Adams says. “I guess because I’d been away to so many tournaments before and won before and nothing really changed. Then all of a sudden I went from zero to hero in 0.1 seconds. It was crazy.

“It means a lot to me. When I was boxing and even out of boxing as well, I think it’s important to have representation and I think it shows you can come from a council estate, not grow up on much and you can still achieve a lot with hard work. That’s why people look up to me so much because I came from nothing and was able to get here.”

Adams added Commonwealth flyweight gold to her collection in 2014 before defending her Olympic title at the 2016 Rio Games, the same year she became world flyweight champion in Astana. She retired with an undefeated record three years later after winning and retaining the World Boxing Organisation’s world flyweight belt.

A pioneer in women’s boxing, it was tough for Adams to stand down in 2019. She’d sustained an eye injury in the first round of a competition. “It was a freak accident. [My opponent] caught me with her thumb.I literally spent the rest of the fight trying to aim for the person in the middle because I was seeing more than one person so that was quite difficult as you can imagine,” Adams recalls.

“When I spoke to the doctors after, they said if it got caught again it could damage my eyesight permanently and that was something I wasn’t willing to risk. Health always comes first.

“At the time it was quite tough leaving what I love behind. But also exciting because I was getting to now do things that I had always wanted to do which I didn’t have time to when I was an athlete.”

In 2020, Adams, who has son Taylor with her partner Ella Baig, was part of the first same-sex couple on BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing in 2020. She and dance partner Katya Jones made history but had to withdraw from the competition early after Jones received a positive Covid-19 test result.

Reflecting on her time on the show, Adams says: “It was super cool. It was a challenge for me because I was doing something new, completely different to boxing. I was looking for a challenge, a way to challenge myself. And it was an experience, especially being the first same sex pairing on Strictly. Any time you do anything for the first time, you’re always nervous but excited and there’s no one really to tell you how it’s going to work or what’s going to happen next. You’re just going with the flow.

“Learning the dance steps and the routine was the hardest part. The fitness I already had. And the live performance was the best bit. It was like going out into the boxing arena and performing in front of a crowd.”

More recently, Adams, who lives between Leeds and London, has been working with the This Girl Can campaign to support more women and girls to be active, and has also launched a boxing programme with the King’s youth charity The Prince’s Trust. It aims to introduce young people to the sport while building their self-confidence, motivation and skills for work, and will focus on those from disadvantaged backgrounds. “I want to be able to give back as boxing has given me so much,” she says.

Adams is also working on a career in acting, and has previously spoken about her dream to land a role in a Marvel movie. Despite always having a passion for acting, it took a back seat for the boxing ring, with Adams forced to turn down a small part in the Black Panther movie after filming clashed with her professional boxing debut. Now though, it could well be time for centrestage. Adams reveals she has some acting work in the pipeline “pretty soon” but she is tight-lipped about exactly what.

Her Leeds talk, however, is something she’s happy to chat about and she gushes with enthusiasm about her hometown appearance. “I’m really excited about it. It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything in Leeds. I’ve had so much support of people from Leeds and Yorkshire the whole way through my career so it’s going to be exciting to see everybody.”

An Evening With Nicola Adams takes place at the Carriageworks Theatre, Leeds, on May 10 at 7.30pm. For tickets, visit www.fane.co.uk/nicola-adams