Dr Ornella Sathoud: Meet the Ghanaian engineer changing the face of women boxing in Africa
The middleweight boxer, who took up the sport at 28, is not afraid to fail in pursuit of her passion. The process engineer spoke to Olympics.com during the African Boxing Qualifier in Dakar, where she was pursuing an Olympic quota.
Boxing
There is something about boxing that draws all kinds of people in.
The focus, mental strength, the physical fitness, surviving the blows - all of these saw Dr Ornella Sathoud become hooked on the sport.
That despite the US-based Ghanaian first visiting a boxing gym at the age of 28.
“I was doing my doctorate in Chemistry, and I was very frustrated by a lot of things - cultural clash, learning to live alone, the environment I was in," she told Olympics.com. "And I was calling my mum every day and my mum was like, ‘You need something to let all of these out.’”
“I was doing rowing, but then it got too expensive for me and I moved to kickboxing. Then I started boxing in 2016.”
That was the start of an amateur career that earned her a place in Ghana’s Black Bombers squad.
The worlds of engineering and boxing - where athletes are often perceived as fighting for survival - could not appear more different.
But Sathoud believes they have plenty in common, saying, "People always ask me, ‘Well, how can you be a scientist and a boxer?’ For me, being a scholar and an athlete at the same time, I just want to inspire more people to do it because I think they are very complimentary.
"it's the same mental resilience that you need, the same level of discipline.”
Sathoud, who turns 36 in October, wants to lead the way for African women in boxing and show that - rather than being driven to fight their way out of difficult life situations - they can compete merely to satisfy their passion for the sport.
Ornella Sathoud on punching out perceptions
At the 2023 Boxing Africa Qualifier in Dakar, Sathoud was one of the oldest female competitors.
As a young girl, she ran down the tracks at school in Gabon and dreamt of becoming a professional athlete.
She had the running genes of her Ghanaian mother and was always proud of her Congolese judoka father.
Even when she moved to Delaware in the United States to pursue her education, Sathoud never quite buried her sporting dreams. In fact, she leaned on her athletic background to boost her academic benchmarks.
She turned to kickboxing, but limited fighting opportunities for a middleweight dimmed her passion for the sport.
That induction convinced her that she belonged in the ring. And Sathoud - who works as a process engineer in a semi-conductor company - was not put off by the stereotyping and stigma surrounding women's boxing.
She told Olympics.com in Dakar, “There are misconceptions that smart people are not good at sport and people who are good at sport and not very smart. I was like, ‘That's not true!’ Because you need to be intelligent in a ring regardless.
“You need to think about what you're doing a little bit, even though it's muscle memory that you use, but it's the same level of thinking that you have to do. So they're both good together."
The urge to fight competitively saw her decide to pursue an amateur career which matured quickly. She won the USA Golden Gloves at 80kg, 83kg and, most recently, when she dropped weight to the 75kg ahead of the Paris 2024 qualifiers.
She decided to test her skills at a higher level.
“At the time, when I looked into representing an African country based on my heritage, I looked at Congo. But it didn't seem that Congo recognised dual citizenship because I also have a U.S. citizenship,” she said.
“And also, when I looked into boxing, there were a lot of female boxers, and they had a couple of great former champions coming out of there as well."
How Sathoud gets comfortable in the ring by ‘being uncomfortable’
Her first assignment for the Black Bombers was at the 2019 African Games in Rabat, where she reached the quarter-finals, losing to African champion Khadija Mardi.
“I remember sitting outside [after the fight] and thinking, ‘Well, that was an experience’.
"That was my first loss. But I was just excited. I just wanted to go back to the U.S. and just train for more. And then at that point my mind was all boxing, boxing, boxing,” said the southpaw who went on to represent Ghana at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England.
“I'm very comfortable with being uncomfortable."
Ghana's Ornella Sathoud competing at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
That experimental mindset and being able to embrace discomfort has helped Sathoud grow and progress in boxing.
After winning the 2023 USA national women’s middleweight title, she was beaten in her first bout in Dakar by Kenya's London 2012 Olympian Elizabeth Andiego.
Sathoud may have further opportunities at the next year's World Qualifiers in Italy and Thailand, and her passion for the sport remains undimmed.
“With boxing, I decided to look at it as a journey,” she continued. “I came into this sport a little bit later and decided to look at things more as a journey because when I train with younger athletes, I feel like they have these very, very big dreams in the future. But for me, it’s all about seeing where you are, and how much further you can push it.”
The rise and popularity of women boxing in recent years excites her, and Sathoud feels it can only continue.
She works in Albany, New York State, with Jerrick Jones who has trained world champions and Olympians.
With limited chances for women to fight at amateur level, the Ghanaian has some suggestions to raise the profile of women’s boxing.
She said, “Ring experience is important and shouldn’t be taken for granted. If women were given the same exposure, I think they would be able to see a lot of growth in women boxing in the skill, the comfort in the ring and the reaction.
“When I watched the guys lose, they didn’t care… they were in the ring, and it's just another day at work…that’s what a lot of women boxers need.
“Like, for example, one thing that the U.S. did, was a women-only tournament. And the twist in that tournament is that, even if you lose, you still get bouts. So the goal of that one-week tournament was just to make sure that women get as much ring exposure as possible. It would be great if we can have an African tournament for women to just get ring exposure."