British boxing star's remarkable comeback six years after quitting with serious disease
Chantelle Reid was forced to quit after being diagnosed with a degenerative back injury but she returned to action at the start of last year and now finds herself heading to the Paris Olympics
Chantelle Reid thought her career was over. Not long after winning bronze at the 2015 World Youth Championships, the middleweight was diagnosed with degenerative disc disease, a debilitating back injury that meant doctors warned her to put the gloves away.
Reid, kickboxing from the age of five, had twice been a European junior champion and looked destined to follow in the footsteps of her hero Chantelle Cameron. But, at its worst, the pain meant she could barely sleep and the medics were emphatic that she had to quit.
Boxing, however, remained a core part of her life. Both parents and her grandad run gyms in the East Midlands, meaning the natural course was to begin coaching as well. Yet being in the corner for her younger brother Duane Jr provided too much temptation and after a six-year break, she could not watch outside the ring much longer.
So Reid embarked on a stunning return, ditching the desk job she hated, and in 18 months she has gone from tentative sparring to Olympic gold medal hopeful.
“I was working at a mortgage advice centre in Derby and then teaching kids boxing in the evenings,” she says. “Going from boxing all my life to being sat in an office was a very different life. I didn’t enjoy it at all. Boxing is for me. I couldn’t really imagine going back to that career.”
The gym provided her with doses of relief. Teaching the next generation brought some fulfilment but it was not enough. “Being in my brother’s corner meant all the adrenaline came back and from then it was a conversation with my family that I’m not in agony anymore, I’m able to sleep and not on any medication, I was able to run.”
In January 2023 she decided to enter the British championships. “It was about easing back in,” she says. But she was put on the England team “straight away” and it was not long before she was at the Olympic qualifiers and, crucially, receiving National Lottery funding. Boxing alone has received more than £100m in funding from the organisation since 1994.
“That was massive,” she says. “I wouldn’t be able to train full time if it wasn’t for funding. I’d have to work. I train three times a day so I need income support. Even buying supplements or equipment, being able to afford petrol to drive to Sheffield [where the boxing programme is based]. I wouldn’t be here, training full time, if it wasn’t for their support.”
She is determined to reward the faith shown in her and make up for the lost years. Unabashedly, her focus is on nothing less than gold. “I can’t wait to get to Paris,” she says. “We’re there two weeks before the Games start. Hopefully, I can absorb it all in that time, get used to the atmosphere and see the other athletes. The environment will be like a different world.
“Those two weeks will help me adapt and focus on what I’m there to do - get a gold medal. I don’t really think I’ve got any challengers. They are all beatable. Once we get the draw it’s just about getting the tactics right to make it happen.”
National Lottery players raise more than £30million a week for good causes including vital funding into sport – from grassroots to elite. To find out more visit: www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk #TNLAthletes
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