The double Olympic boxing champion is also a style icon and LGBT role model. She talks about Team GB’s success – and swapping training for cake and clubbing
‘She looks bigger on the telly.” It’s a curious thing to say about a flyweight boxer with a fighting weight of 51kg (8st 1lb), but the training gym regular who has sidled over to my side of the ring for a better view of the double Olympic gold champion is right. Nicola Adams is even tinier than you think she’s going to be. Her stature – just shy of 1.62m (5ft 4in) in bouncy trainers – seems too small to contain it all: the Muhammad Ali shuffle, the Miss World smile, the megawatt punch.
Adams is dressed in the crisp, boxfresh aesthetic specific to athletes who have made it to business-class lounge level: slim grey marl tracksuit bottoms tucked into pristine white high-top trainers, sizeable diamond studs in her lobes, a fancy pair of gold headphones worn around the neck of her bright white T-shirt. For the portrait, she adds the finishing touches, first pulling on a navy Team GB hoodie and then, after digging around in the side pocket of a Louis Vuitton rucksack, her latest gold medal, which she pulls out of a thick black sock. “Stops it getting scratched,” she says, flashing me that Tinker Bell smile and looping it around her neck.
I never think, I'll be happy just to win a medal. I’m only happy with gold
Related: Nicola Adams: ‘After I won gold, I went to McDonald’s for the hell of it’
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