The former tearaway was overweight and unhappy when she found boxing but is now punching her way towards the top
Rudderless, running wild and 32kg over her current fighting weight, Shannon Courtenay remembers excusing herself midway through her first boxercise class six years ago on the pretence of needing the loo. “I was hungover,” she recalls. “I was so unfit and I just couldn’t wait for the hour to be up. I told the instructor I was going out for a wee but I actually went out for a cigarette and got sick.”
She was aged 20 at the time and had gone along with friends from Abbots Langley, near Watford. Her instructor noticed that for all her shortcomings in the fitness department, Courtenay packed a particularly ferocious punch and recommended that she present herself at the Finchley boxing gym, where another wayward youth by the name of Anthony Joshua first laced up his gloves for further tuition in the sweet science.
Written by Barry Glendenning
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/may/03/shannon-courtenay-i-was-only-girl-there-but-changed-my-life-boxing under the title “
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