Sporting legend Nicola Adams OBE is a two-time Olympic champion boxer who made history as the first female boxer to win an Olympic gold medal at London 2012. A trailblazer for women’s boxing, she is officially the most successful British female boxer of all time, and was the first British Boxer in 92 years to successfully defend an Olympic title. She is also the only female boxer to have won all of the available major titles: Olympic, World, Commonwealth and European. She has been voted Glamour’s Sportswoman of the Year, and came top in the list of the Independent’s 101 most influential LGBT people in Britain in 2012. Her best-selling autobiography Believe: Boxing, Olympics and my life outside the ring was published in 2018.

Born in Leeds, Adams first visited a boxing club when she was 12 years old and won her first fight at the age of 13. The British Amateur Boxing Association had only sanctioned its first boxing competition for women in 1997, and Adams struggled to find suitable opponents for several years before becoming the first woman boxer to represent England in 2001. In 2009, her dreams of success nearly ended after she sustained a career-threatening injury, but she fought back stronger than ever to win gold at the European Amateur Championships and silver at the 2010 World Championships, qualifying for the London Olympics where she became one of the heroes of the games.

Adams was chosen as team GB’s flag bearer at the 2015 European Games in Baku, and was appointed an MBE in the 2013 New Year’s Honours list for her services to boxing and incredible achievements, followed by an OBE in 2016.