Chantelle Reid: “Winning a gold medal is realistic. I am not going to Paris for anything less.”

Chantelle Reid: “Winning a gold medal is realistic. I am not going to Paris for anything less.”

It is a quite remarkable story. Once a rising star. But Chantelle Reid was six years away from her sport due to a severe back injury. Reid only returned to boxing in early 2023. Expectations were probably low to the uneducated outsider. But against all reasonable odds, the Derbyshire fighter has now qualified for the Paris Olympics. By any standards, it is some comeback.

“It was the best time of my life. The preparation leading up to it was amazing,” Reid told me over Zoom of her time leading up to the tournament that has ultimately changed her life. “My coaches, my dad, and all my family have been supporting me all the way through. As soon as I got the call to enter the qualifier in Italy. I had six weeks’ notice, and I had to do it. We had one chance basically because I wasn’t picked for the second qualifier in May. So I just thought this is it, I am doing it now. It was six weeks of pure graft, but we got it done, and I got the ticket to go to Paris.”

An immensely talented junior before the disc injury put a temporary halt to her career. A return in January 2023 was followed by an impressively swift return to the form that made a golden prospect six years previously. Her teenage years brought her a gold medal at the 2014 European Juniors and a bronze at the 2015 World Youth Championship. Reid always had talent and plenty of it before the enhanced hiatus that was needed to rest her still-developing body. And to save her career. But when she did finally return, it wasn’t long before that talent started to shine once again.

“I got on the Team GB programme in October,” Reid told FightPost. “But obviously, I had quite a lot of experience prior. I was boxing at quite a high level as a junior and at the youth level when I was eighteen and nineteen. Then I had my gap, but I then came back to it. It wasn’t like I was a total beginner. For somebody who doesn’t know the international scene, it looks like I have only been boxing internationally for five months, but that is not the case. I only came back last January, but the skills were still there. It was just getting the stamina and the cardio back.”

Despite the six years away from her sport, Reid always thought that one day she would return.

“I didn’t think my career was over. I just think my body needed a rest,” Reid says of that debilitating back injury and the resulting time away. “It needed to fully develop, and my body just needed that time. I feel if I hadn’t had the break away from the sport, I might never have boxed again. The way I was training and boxing at that age, it could have done some long-term damage, so the break was needed.”

The time away from boxing wasn’t wasted Reid says.

“I got my Level One and Two in coaching. My grandad and my dad have a boxing gym, so I was also teaching kids at non-contact boxing. I was helping my dad around the gym as well. My brother has been training as well, so it’s all in the family. So I never really came away from the sport, I was always involved in it.”

But once her coaching talents started to develop further, the inevitable return to a life inside a ring edged a little closer.

“I got my Level Two coaching course done, and all my certificates. So then I was able to work the corner. My brother had a fight, and I worked his corner and I got all his adrenaline and all the excitement from being in the warm-up area, and it made me realise that I want to have that feeling again. So I said to my dad, “Shall we enter the championships?” So I was training for that for about four months, and I won the championships. I started the whole process from scratch. I didn’t go straight into the England or Team GB set-up immediately. From the England programme, I then went on to the assessments for Team GB. I sat three or four assessments for Team GB before I was taken on. The whole process took around eight months.”

The time away couldn’t dim the talent of Chantelle Reid when she returned after six years away. The general fitness soon returned, but the fighting fitness took a little longer.

“As soon as I started sparring, that was when it got difficult because it was like a different level of sparring that I needed. Working the pads, the bags, and skipping that wasn’t difficult. But when I put on the headguard to start sparring again, that was different. I could punch, but when someone was punching back at me, that was what I found hard at first. Sparring took a bit of getting used to, but it didn’t take too long.”

Combat sports have been a part of her life from an early age. Not quite punching and kicking from birth. But it wasn’t far off.

“I was kickboxing from the age of five,” Reid told me. “I started kickboxing internationally when I was a junior. I got a European and world title, but kickboxing wasn’t an Olympic sport, so I started boxing when I was about thirteen. My first fight was actually at the European championships. I went to a squad training session in Tamworth, and I got spotted there. So I then got sent to Hungary for the European championships. From there they kept me on the England programme. I went to China for the world championships as a youth, where I got a bronze. So I have been punching from a very young age.”

All those years in the sport. The extended time away her body so badly needed before the incredible comeback has brought Chantelle Reid to this moment. There are no immediate thoughts of life after Paris. No dreams of turning professional. At least, not yet. The Olympics is everything to her right now.

It’s no ticket just to ride. Chantelle Reid is going to Paris for one reason only. To win.

“Winning a gold medal is realistic. I am not going to Paris for anything less.”