Double Olympic champion Nicola Adams shifts focus from fighting boxers to fighting superheroes
The time of facing the world's best boxers has passed for Nicola Adams. Now she is looking to face the world's biggest superheroes instead. The British athlete spoke to Olympics.com about the mindfulness strategies that are helping propel her into the Marvel Universe and beyond.
Boxing
Nicola Adams is used to being a hero, but lately, she wouldn’t mind being a villain too.
After 25 years in the boxing ring, the two-time Olympic champion is fighting for a new dream role – as a superhero or villain in an action movie. The British athlete retired from competitive sport four years ago and is now channelling the mental strength she gained as an athlete to pursue a career in acting.
"I don't think my retirement changed my perspective on anything. I still have goals that I want to achieve, so the drive didn't stop," Adams told Olympics.com. "The same energy that I had in the boxing, I'm taking that over to my acting now.
"[And] the thing that I'm looking forward to most in life now would be becoming a Marvel superhero. That's what I'm looking forward to."
Olympics.com spoke to the first-ever female Olympic boxing champion to find out why her life journey resembles a movie plot, the superheroes she would like to play on screen, and the softer side she's discovered since her retirement.
Origin story: Breaking stereotypes in women's boxing
Nicola Adams would not have become an Olympic champion if not for a babysitter. Or rather, the lack of one.
Her mother could not find someone to take care of Adams and her brother after school, so she enrolled her children in a boxing class. Twelve years old at the time, Adams had tried football, karate and 100m sprints beforehand, but nothing excited her as boxing practice.
"I absolutely loved it. It was unbelievable," she recalled. "I got into the gym and I was just like, 'Wow, this must have been what it was like when Muhammad Ali was training'."
Ali remained a reference point for Adams as she came up the ranks. The girl who would one day become a role model for female boxers worldwide had no female boxers to look up to herself.
"Growing up in female boxing - because there wasn't any Olympic female boxing champions yet - my role models were Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard. I just loved the charm and charisma of Muhammad Ali, his poems, everything he stood for inside and outside of the ring," Adams said.
"I love that he fought for human rights and stood up and fought for change. And it really inspired me to do the same. I wanted to fight for change. I wanted to get women's boxing into the Olympics so that one day I could be an Olympic champion too."
Adams' advocacy boosted the broader efforts to get women's boxing into the Olympic Games. The discipline was included in the programme for London 2012, but even with that milestone, much remained to be done.
For Adams getting ready for the home Games meant fighting not only other boxers in the ring, but also the entrenched stereotypes about women's boxing that existed in society.
"When I first went into the ring in 2012 in the Olympics, a lot of people didn't even realise that women actually even boxed," she said. "Some of the stereotypes I was fighting against were, 'Women belong in the kitchen', 'Why don't you play a different sport?' And it was a constant fight, a constant battle. I believe when I won my gold medal in 2012, it really opened up the doors for women's boxing. Especially in Britain, there was a 50 per cent increase in participation, so there was loads of girls coming into the sport."
Adams witnessed the change in attitudes first-hand as the excitement in the stands built to a deafening crescendo from one round to the next.
"Stepping out into the crowd at London 2012, the noise was so loud they actually reported that the noise was the same amount of noise as a jumbo jet plane taking off. That's how loud the arena was," Adams said.
"I couldn't even block out the noise of the crowd. It was that loud. I just decided to feed off of the noise from the crowd. Every time I threw a punch, they cheered and it gave me even more energy to keep on throwing, keep on entertaining.
"It was unbelievable the amount of support that women's boxing had."
Nicola Adams: Punching through the dark times
With the London 2012 gold medal displayed in her gym, along with the boots and gloves that she wore in the final, Adams has a regular reminder of her history-making accomplishment. But not all memories of her Olympic journey, which also saw her successfully defend her flyweight title at Rio 2016, are joyful
Adams has faced a fair share of difficult moments, and not all of them in the ring. One of the most testing times was in 2010 when she was sidelined with a painful injury.
"Just before Olympics announced that women's boxing was going to be in, I had a really serious back injury and I was out of boxing for about a year," Adams recalled. "That was my lowest point because I couldn't do anything apart from rest. And to go from that to then coming back and winning an Olympic gold medal was an unbelievable achievement for me, and going from not being able to lift my shoulders off the floor to then being No, 1 in the world, now I know that I can achieve anything in life."
Adams tapped into her mental powers to overcome the challenging time. Creating small, achievable goals helped her to feel like she was making progress, while the bigger goal of going to the Olympic Games kept pushing her forward.
"That helped me a lot," Adams said. "It was just telling myself, 'One step at a time, we're going to get back to where I used to be'."
Visualisation and being organised - whether it is planning all meals or getting her kit ready the night before - have also been important strategies in her success.
Adams is a firm believer in learning from defeats and using pressure as fuel to move past her opponents.
"I definitely felt the pressure growing on me going from London to Rio because I had a huge target on my back. I was No.1 in the world, No.1 in Europe. I'd won every tournament there was to win and every time I stepped in the ring against an opponent, it was a win-win situation for them," she said.
"They had nothing to lose, so it was very difficult, very tough to stay focused. It's easier being the underdog and on your way up than it is to maintain that level of winning constantly. There's so much pressure involved, and how I got round that was whenever I didn't feel like going out for a run, for example, when it's raining, I'd be thinking, 'OK, there's somebody out there that wants to be the next Olympic champion and they won't mind running in the rain'. So for me, that's what got me out of bed. That's what kept me going and kept me focused."
A biographical documentary about the double Olympic champion called Lioness: The Nicola Adams Story was released in November 2021.
Olympic champion vs. Namor: Transferring a boxing mindset onto a film set
Some of the strategies that Adams employed as a competitive athlete continue to serve her well today.
Meditation and yoga are still a part of her routine, as is visualisation. The difference is that instead of visualising the referee raising her arm in the ring, she is visualising a film director call 'Action'.
"One of the things that I really want to do in my acting career is to be in a Marvel movie, become a superhero or a villain. That's my goal so that's what I visualise, the next superhero or the next villain," Adams said. "I don't mind if I'm the bad guy or a good guy because every superhero needs a really good villain to make them look good."
Adams has her dream role figured out as well. It would be to star in the Black Panther franchise, be that T'Challa's friend or foe.
As for potentially facing rivals with superhero powers, Adams doesn't doubt that her time in the boxing ring will help her fend off the fiercest of opponents.
"Boxing has made me so much more confident in life," the Olympic champion said. "It's given me confidence. It's given me determination. It's given me focus. It's given me a lot of drive as well. I know the things that I can accomplish. I know that whenever my back's against the wall, whenever I'm at my lowest point, it's taught me that I know that I can get out of any situation that I'm in and keep on pushing and moving forward."
Nicola Adams: A superhero with a softer side
Retirement has not all been about preparing to fight the next villain with superpowers, however.
Stepping back from the boxing ring has also made Adams discover a softer side as she got to spend more time with her partner Ella Baig and their son, Taylor, who was born in July 2022.
“Motherhood is crazy,” the Olympic boxer said. “Every day he does something new and different that he couldn't do before. And just seeing his little smile, I never expected to feel or experience the things that I do now. It's crazy how much having a new baby can change your whole life.
“It's going to be a fantastic journey just seeing him grow up and seeing the man he becomes.”
After missing many birthdays and anniversaries in her earlier years because she was full into training for the next competition, Adams now savours being able to spend more time with her family.
One of the highlights so far was seeing Taylor walk for the first time. Adams recalled the joy she felt when she saw him let go of his toy walker and walk over to the sofa.
“It's definitely made me a softer person," she admitted with a smile. "I see what it's like being at home, doing home life, and then coming back and seeing the boxing and doing the (boxing) commentating. And it's definitely a lot easier being on the outside of the ring, looking in.”