Valerian Spicer: “With boxing, I found a purpose, and a sense of achievement. it was something I really needed. it pretty much changed every area of my life in a very positive way.”

Valerian Spicer: “With boxing, I found a purpose and a sense of achievement. It was something I really needed. It pretty much changed every area of my life in a very positive way.”

It’s the time of year where everyone in the public eye has seemingly got a book out. The endless plugs and promotional obligations that fill up virtually every single TV show, with the contractual podcasts thrown in for good measure.

Valerian Spicer is no different. A fighter who is thriving in retirement, has recently released her written offering with Life Lessons From a Boxing Champion: Round By Round.

“It was four years in the making,” Spicer told me over Zoom. “After I retired in 2018, I have been doing a lot of coaching and things in and around boxing. I started coaching straight away, and an ex-client of mine, we started to get to know each other, and he was getting to know my story. He invited me to do some talks with him at a charity where he works. To fast forward, we developed a methodology that we called The Spicer Method. It is six states of mind that I competed in. Through his network, we got someone whom he knows, who is a journalist, to see if he would be interested in writing a book for us. So that’s kind of how it came about. But this was four years ago when we started to get it going. He did a series of interviews with all of us. But then it just froze for four years. Funnily enough, how the universe works, one of the centres where I work and is very supportive of me, and they brought us back together. So we said, let’s get it out; the book was written. There were just a few small bits to finalise it off.”

“The book is my story of starting boxing when I was thirty,” Spicer added. “I changed course in life from working in an office. I had gone through a period of not really knowing what I wanted to do. You get pushed in a certain direction when you are a child. The direction I got pushed into was great, and I went to university. But I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Sport was my life when I was at school, so it would have been a natural progression for me to go into sport.

“My mum, being an immigrant from Dominica, was all around education, and sport wasn’t something you did as a job. When I was at school, sports for women weren’t big. There were not many role models as well. I went to university and drifted out of jobs, and I was quite miserable at some stages of my life. I joined a boxing gym, and there was a coach there who asked me if I had thought about competing. That led me to go to an England boxing gym. Things basically set off from there, really.

“The book has got some history of changing course. But every chapter represents the methodology I share with Andy Cole, who is a psychologist. Every chapter in the book brings out a story in my boxing career where the methodology either worked or didn’t work. At the end of every chapter, Andy offers a bit of insight for the reader to take away.”

Valerian Spicer was a late entry into boxing. Spicer had already hit thirty before the boxing bug hit her. “My partner tried to take me to a boxing gym when I was twenty-seven, but I wasn’t interested. I just joined a gym to get fit. I hadn’t done any sport or exercise for ten years. My love for sport came back. With boxing, I found a purpose and a sense of achievement. It was something I really needed. It pretty much changed every area of my life in a very positive way. That sense of achievement when you win, and having your hand raised.

“I spent my 20s in a series of jobs that were not right for me,” Spicer added. She had belatedly found her calling.

Despite starting relatively late, Spicer still carved out an impressive resume. In her sixty-four fights, she competed in two Commonwealth Games and two World Championships representing Dominica.

“I am really proud that I changed my life through boxing,” Spicer relayed to me. “I feel proud of what I achieved after starting so late. But the thing that resonates the most is that when I started boxing, my love for sport came back, and I managed to make a career out of boxing and my love for it. I think that comes before everything.”

There is no telling what Valerian Spicer could have achieved if she had started her boxing journey earlier. But she is more than satisfied with what she achieved in a sport that changed everything for her. “I don’t have regrets. I did the best I could in the amount of time that I had.”

Life Lessons From a Boxing Champion: Round by Round is out now.