BOXING legend Carl Froch has told of his disgust at being accused of not being a true Brit by a ring rival because of his Polish grandparents, saying: “It was the lowest blow.”
The former super-middleweight champion — who today gets behind a new anti-hate campaign — has spoken for the first time of fellow boxer George Groves’ taunts in 2013.
In an exclusive interview with The Sun on Sunday, Carl said: “I thought, ‘You horrible bastard’.
“To be honest, it was the first time I worried that people wouldn’t get behind me when I boxed.
“I thought maybe they’d believe his claim that I wasn’t British and wouldn’t want to support me.
“It was a low blow, I was disgusted. I thought, ‘Well, I do have Polish ancestors but I was born and raised in Britain and I’m British’.
Related stories
“Sometimes being British means having family from somewhere else.”
Carl, 39, who works as a pundit for Sky Sports, is today backing the #BetterThanThat campaign against the shocking rise in racism in the UK.
Launched with the Polish Cultural Institute, the drive follows a 41 per cent increase in hate crimes in the past year. It will be announced in Parliament on Thursday.
A video portraying the victims forms part of the campaign, as do various social media postings by celebrities, including Sunderland footballer Jermain Defoe, holding up the slogan #BetterThanThat.
Prime Minister Theresa May said she was “delighted to see people and groups from all communities coming together” for the drive, which is also backed by Brendan Cox, the husband of murdered Labour MP Jo Cox.
Carl’s grandfather Wojciech, who died more than a decade ago, and grandmother Alexandra, 89, had fled their homeland during the Nazi invasion in World War Two.
Throat cut over lingo
TERRIFIED Bartosz Milewski almost became another shocking statistic of the hate crime sweeping Britain.
The Portsmouth University student, 21, was chatting to friends in a park when racist thugs attacked, slashing his throat with a broken bottle and beating him with planks of wood.
He says: “The bottle missed my artery by a centimetre so I was very lucky. If it had been cut, I’d be dead.
“So much blood was coming out, I was sure I’d die. The attack was unprovoked. We were just talking.
“They said, ‘This isn’t your country, you shouldn’t be talking in Polish because this is England. You should be talking in English’.
“But it hasn’t changed my view of Britain. I’ve been here for more than seven years and there are so many good people. You can’t judge a whole country by one idiot.”
Until the spat with arch rival Groves, now 28, Carl said he had not faced any barracking over his Polish ancestry during his career.
Their bouts in 2013 and 2014 went down in British boxing history.
But the build-up to the first of Carl’s victories was soured by Groves’ response to criticism from Carl of his decision to spar ahead of the fight with Danish boxer Mikkel Kessler, now 37, rather than a Brit.
Groves hit back on Twitter: “For everyone who is saying I am unpatriotic for sparring with Mikkel Kessler, remember . . . Mikkel is half English and Carl Froch is Polish.”
The Sun on Sunday wants to emphasise there is no suggestion that George Groves is a racist.
Hate is not what being British is about
Carl says ignorance like that needs to be stamped out.
In September, the nation was stunned by the killing of Pole Arek Jozwik, 40, in Harlow, Essex. He was set upon by 20 thugs as he walked home — simply because of his nationality.
It was the most savage in a worrying new wave of attacks on Eastern Europeans living in the UK.
Carl said: “I understand people’s concerns about immigration as I have the same concerns myself.
“It can make you upset when you hear about people milking the system. But it makes me really angry when I read about people being attacked or discriminated against because of where they are from.
“There is no way you can condone or justify that.
“I’m proud to be British because of our bulldog spirit and the fact we are a strong nation that never gives up. When I fought my first world title fight against Jean Pascal, I couldn’t wait to get that big Union Jack on my shorts.
“But being British never meant that you should hate people or attack the defenceless and the weak. It can’t be justified and it is wrong.” Carl, a father of three who is engaged to model Rachael Cordingley, 29, was aware of his Polish heritage growing up.
Firebombed and family threatened
A POLISH woman whose house was firebombed by thugs says she is living in fear following a torrent of racist abuse.
Devastated Gabriela Ablamowicz also received a death threat so chilling it has left her scared to leave the house.
The problems started shortly after the Brexit vote, when arsonists destroyed the shed at her Plymouth home.
Business owner Gabriela says: “I went into the bathroom and the window was orange. The shed was on fire. I called the police and fire station.
“Then I found a letter on the doormat. I opened it and was really shocked. It said, ‘Go back to your f****** country, it’s your family next’. But no one has been caught.
“After what happened, we are scared if there is a little knock on the door.
“I am scared to go into the garden after dark. I have lived here ten years but they tell me to go home to my own country.”
Gabriela and husband Adam, below, are both 52. They have four children.
Gabriela said: “Some people don’t understand what Brexit is. They think that now Britain is leaving the EU, anyone who is not from here has to leave.
“Nigel Farage has not done enough to explain Brexit.
“But we will not move out. This is our country.”
He regularly ate Polish food and picked up a bit of the language each Christmas at his grandparents’ house in Nottingham.
Miner Wojciech worked in the pits around Nottingham for 25 years before retiring. And Carl is convinced he inherited his boxing talent from that side of the family.
He said: “My Polish background helped me to be fit and strong.
“Making weight before a fight was never hard work for me because of my ancestry. My Polish relatives are all over 6ft and big and strong. I feel like I’m genetically gifted because of those genes.
“I’m slim and skinny and have eight per cent body fat and I eat anything I see — pizza, Chinese, anything I want.
“I still eat gherkins and sauerkraut, pickles, all the Polish stuff.
“There are Polish shops all round Nottingham and I’ll buy stuff in there and make a potato salad in the Polish way. My grandparents came over in the 1940s and immigration was a lot different then.
“They were made to feel welcome as the Poles were embraced by our country after we fought together in the war. Both my grandparents spoke with a strong Polish accent but I didn’t feel different to anyone else when I was growing up.
“My best mate at school was mixed race. His dad was Jamaican and his mum was white.
“He would get picked on a bit because he was one of only three black guys in the school.
“So I know how cruel kids can be when you’re different.”
Carl gets visibly upset when discussing the hate crimes that have blighted Britain since our nation voted to leave the EU in June.
Talking about a Polish war memorial vandalised in Portsmouth, he said: “That’s horrendous. You can guarantee that the person who did that is just thick.
“I’ll go on record and say that. They can’t understand what they’re doing. There’s no reason to do that to fighting men who have fought for this country to give it what it’s got — freedom.
“Our country was the last man standing when Hitler invaded Europe.
“We were fighting for freedom and democracy and that’s what we need to keep fighting for today. Not for hate and racism.
“That’s not what being British is about. We are much, much better than that.”
Leave a comment