Bisexual boxer Nicola Adams quits the Olympics to go pro
Double Olympic champion Nicola Adams has quit the Games.
The 34-year-old will not be part of the Great Britain squad in the build-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Instead she is to go professional, having signed up with promoter Frank Warren.
Adams said: “My hero was Muhammad Ali.
“I said after watching him I wanted to box at the Olympics and turn pro.”
She added: “Together we can help take women’s boxing to new levels and I can’t wait to get to get in the ring in April and start working towards becoming a world champion.”
Adams previously spoke of wanting to be the first female boxer to headline at Las Vegas and how the professional game was “waiting for a big name to step in there and open up the doors”.
The Team GB star came out as bisexual some years ago.
She has spoken in interviews of lying awake at night worrying before she eventually told her mum she was bi: “It took a lot of courage,” she said.
“I knew one other person in my school who was the same and we talked.
“We hadn’t come out and we were thinking, ‘What is the best approach? How do I tell my mum?’
“You never know how the family is going to react, so I was nervous”, the boxer told GQ.
“Mum was in the kitchen washing up and I was like, ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
“I was really sweating, and she says, ‘What’s wrong?’
“And I was just like, ‘I’m bisexual.’
And she was like, ‘OK, put the kettle on.’ She said she kind of already knew.”
Adams later wished she had said something sooner: “I was expecting some big reaction and I’m thinking, ‘Why have I been stressing about this for months?’”
Adams hopes to use her celebrity to inspire others: “I would like to do more for the LGBT community, try to help people.
“I can’t do as much as I would like because of the training.”
Here’s my Mobo Award pic.twitter.com/yIbnRnBnoH
— Nicola Adams MBE (@NicolaAdamsMBE) 5 November 2016
It’s a goal she has nevertheless made progress on, winning the ‘Paving The Way’ award at last week’s Mobos.
Adams has now set her sights on the Tokyo 2020 games, where she hopes to make history by becoming Britain’s first three-time Olympic boxing champ.
