"There are so many. I'm just one of a billion'

Cindy Ngamba has won boxing titles in England but will carry the flag for the refugee team in Paris

- Andy Bull

It's the stink of the gym Cindy Ngamba remembers best. Sweat, leather and bleach. It was like nothing she had ever smelled, and she loved .it. She was 15, and had just finished football training when she saw these boys come into the changing rooms at her youth club.

They were steaming in the heat and it looked, to her, like they were on fire. She was curious, walked past them through the door and saw more of them, some working heavy bags, some fighting shadows, some sparring in a ring. It was the first time she had seen anyone box.

"And I said to myself, right then: "This, this is what I want to do."" She asked the old man running the place if she could join in with the next session. Ngamba, who was born in Cameroon, had been in England for only four years.

She was still learning English. She was shy, she was overweight and she was being bullied at school because of her size, the way she spoke and because she didn't know what deodorant was.

The man's name was Dave Langhorn. "Come back tomorrow," he said. When she did, he told her to do 10 press-ups, 10 sit-ups, 10 squats and three minutes of skipping. It was the same at the session after, and the one after that. "Every day I'd come thinking: Today's the day I'm going to get to put gloves on,' but it never was." Ngamba decided it was a test.

"I remember thinking: 'He's trying to challenge me, trying to see if I'm going to quit."" So she pushed herself harder. "I mean, that's how I've always done life. OK. Let's go again, and again, and again."

Langhorn didn't know it, but after every session Ngamba would go up to the gym upstairs and work on the treadmill. "He thought I used to go home, till he caught me at it one time." She grew leaner and harder.

After a year and a half, Langhorn finally let her start on learning footwork in the mirror, "forward, backward, sideways, left, right, move my hands, move my head, move my feet, step, slip, roll, step, slip, roll."