Female Boxing Champ Lands In Accra

Lesley Sackey, Amateur Boxing Association (ABA) female champion, is in the country to find the parallels and differences between the female boxing cultures in Ghana and England, and to seek further insight about her personal journey into boxing.

Lesley, a British-Ghanaian who is also a European Union gold medalist, is born to a Ghanaian father, Nii Osam Sackey. She arrived at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra from the UK with BBC sports journalist Rasheed Speede last Saturday to investigate female boxing in Ghana in a new documentary.

The documentary, which will be edited by Speede, aims to find out how popular female boxing is as a sport in Ghana, what challenges female boxers face and how they compare to those challenges of their British female contemporaries, and their response to the sport being included in the 2012 Olympics.

She told the press on arrival that unlike professional boxing, amateur boxing in the UK has prospects, and it being considered in the London hosted 2012 Olympics, among other things, influenced her trip to her fatherland.

“Ghana has a strong heritage in boxing, and I wondered whether my path into boxing wasn’t as random as I once thought. I always thought I just fell into boxing by accident; I now wonder where my fighting spirit really comes from,” she said.

The BBC Last Woman standing finalist was met on arrival by the president of the Ghana Amateur Boxing Federation (GABF) Mr Ray Quarcoo, who pointed out that the boxer’s visit forms part of GABF’s long-term planning to revamp boxing in the country.