(JAN 1, 2017)   WBAN sends warmest congratulations to Great Britain’s Olympic Flyweight Gold Medallist from London 2012 and Rio 2016 on her being made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 Queen’s New Year Honours List announced this week.

This is the second such award for the 33 years old Yorkshire woman, previously became a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to boxing.

She has won virtually every honour that the sport can bestow but still she remains as keen and eager as ever as she explained to please her many thousands of fans and admirers through the United Kingdom and further afield, none more so than former USA Olympian and rival in London 2012, Marlen Esparza now one of her closest friends. Indeed should Adams turn pro as I feel she will, then who knows we may yet see an Adams vs Esparza ‘battle royal’ in Pros.

As we have recounted here on WBAN in previous years, she was the first female boxer to represent England internationally, and later the first woman to win an Olympic boxing gold. Then of course in Rio 2016 she became the first woman to win a second Olympic gold. In Rio she equalled a long standing record British record, that of Policeman Harry Mallin who in 2024 was the last Brit to retain an Olympic title. How did that feel?

After that Rio final she told the waiting media:

“It feels absolutely amazing, especially to be able to think to myself that I’ve created history and I’m now the most accomplished British amateur boxer of all time,”

Speaking to the ‘Daily Telegraph’ she confirmed that she was still ‘thinking’ about her future and expected to make a decision early in the New Year:

“The last four years have been hard. Being ranked No  1, everybody’s chasing you, everybody wants to be where you are. They want to be the person who beats Nicola Adams,” she told him. “It’s easy to sit at the top and take things lightly and think you’ve made it and nobody can beat you now. You can take your foot off the gas. Then somebody comes up, an underdog, and knocks you off the top of the podium. I’ve just shown how focus and determined I can be when I put my mind to it.

I’m still having a good think about the next four years. Turning pro would be an exciting challenge for me, opening new doors, new challenges, new titles I can take – European, world. I’d love to be able to do that. It’s definitely an option.

I haven’t sat down with my team to decide whether I’m going to do the pro thing, go to Tokyo, or even go into acting. I’ve already been doing acting lessons. I’m taking it seriously. I like the idea of a new challenge. I’ll be deciding in the next few weeks.”

So has she ruled out defending her Olympic titles from 2012 and 2016? She will be 37 at the end of the next Olympic cycle but no, she has not ruled that out either.

“Yeah, thanks for bringing that up,” she joked. “But the fact is, I’m still hungry. It still feels like there’s a lot more to achieve, whatever path I take. If I go to Tokyo I could become a triple Olympic champion. No Brit [boxer] has ever done that, man or woman. That’d be a nice bit of history to have. If I turn pro, who knows where that may lead.”

Nicola also has two Golden Post Boxes in her honour in Cookridge Street, Leeds another first for a female boxer in UK. So if ever you are in Leeds why not pop along and have your own photo taken at one of her Post boxes before posting your cards or letters home!