Nicola Adams
The first woman ever to win an Olympic boxing title – and the first to dance with a woman on “Strictly Come Dancing”.
Nicola Adams grew up in Leeds with her mother and younger brother. At twelve, she went along to a boxing gym because her mother had no one to look after her, and she never left. For years women’s boxing was barely recognised, and Adams worked as an extra and builder to finance her training.
When women’s boxing was included in the Olympic Games for the first time in 2012, Adams won gold in the flyweight division in London – the first female Olympic boxing champion in history. In Rio in 2016 she defended her title. She then turned professional, became world champion and retired in 2019 undefeated.
Adams was open about her relationships with women from the beginning of her fame. In 2012 the newspaper The Independent named her the most influential LGBT person in Britain. In 2020 she took part in the BBC show “Strictly Come Dancing” as half of the first same-sex couple in the show’s history.
She has used her fame to encourage girls to take up sport and to speak out against homophobia in sport.