I did not sacrifice everything all these years I’ve been boxing and training so hard to settle for a few good performances
The moment, when it came, was really powerful. Last Thursday night, in our GB Boxing team room in the Olympic village, it finally hit me. This is real. I am about to fight in the Olympic Games and my hopes of winning a medal, with gold being my favourite colour, begin now.
We had been in Tokyo for 10 days, staying in a hotel for the first week before we moved into the village and it had all felt a bit surreal. I had this weird feeling this was just another training camp and I couldn’t switch on totally. It was like being in some kind of limbo where you are waiting for something to happen and kick-start everything. Last Thursday night, around eight o’clock, it happened. They made the draw for the boxing competition and the coaches came in with the news for all 11 of us in the GB team. They went through it fighter by fighter and when it came to me it was like the world suddenly stopped.
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