Newsok
Wednesday June 20, 2018
She pants from exhaustion, sweat dripping down her forehead and over a bruise or two as practice finishes.
It's all part of Ramla Ali's routine, twice a day, six days a week, either on the track or at the gym. It is what it takes to be a champion in boxing, but Ali doesn't mind it.
In fact, she relishes it.
"It's a little bit of an addiction," she explains. "You just want to train harder so you can win another fight, so you can be better than you were yesterday".
And it's been like that since the Londoner won her first bout as a teenager: "The moment the referee puts your hand up, it's such a high, such a rush, and you just want more of it."
insidenewsHer big moment came in 2016 when, against all odds, Ali won the British title in her weight category (54 kilograms).
"I went in there a bit of a like an underdog," she recalls. "I was so scared when I saw the list [with the other fighters] and I ended up beating them and came out on top."
"I think that was one of my proudest moments to date".
The 27-year-old's glory in Britain is a far cry from her birthplace in Somalia, where civil war forced her family to flee when she was just two years old.
"The reason why we came here is because my eldest brother died in the war," Ali says, "He was struck by a grenade as he played outside the house. Obviously from then, my mom didn't want that life for us."
In a tale that's all too familiar these days, her family packed up and set off to Kenya in an overcrowded boat.
"Five hundred people were just climbing on, trying to survive," Ali's mother told her. "A lot of people died along the way."
Ali herself almost didn't make it, becoming violently ill and losing a lot of weight during the journey.
Ali and her family eventually made it to the UK where they were given refugee status, but her trials didn't end there. Struggling to fit in at school, Ali was teased because of her size.
"I was bullied a bit, for being overweight," she recalls. "The girls [at my school] were quite slender in frame and here's me standing out."
Ali's mother tried to boost her confidence with a membership to a local sports center, where she tried a few classes until she stumbled across a boxercise session.