Cindy Ngamba is an Olympian who grew up in England and trains with Team GB – but will not represent them.
Ngamba left Cameroon for Britain at the age of 11 and made a successful path in boxing – he was a three-time English champion.
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And despite training and travelling with Team GB – she represents the Olympic Refugee Team.
He said iNews“I feel like I’m already part of Great Britain.
“I train with them, travel with them, compete with them, but I don’t represent them.”
Ngamba has spent more than half his life in England, where he attended school and university, while his family also remains in the UK.
Ten years after moving with her brother and uncle to Britain – where her father lived – it took her eight attempts to get papers to stay.
In 2019, he was arrested while signing at an immigration center.
Ngamba, 26, said: “I was with my brother. We used to go to Manchester every week, but this time we were arrested.”
They were sent to different internment camps in London and after spending two days there the Home Ministry was satisfied that their family members were in Britain.
Ngamba also risks jail time if she returns to Cameroon, where homosexual activity is a crime – she has come out to her family that she is gay, but still has to prove it to the Home Ministry.
She said: “You could be killed, beaten or put in prison. I can’t go back.”
Ngamba received asylum papers in 2020 and was already on her way to a successful boxing career.
She began attending Bolton Lads and Girls Club, part of the national OnSide network of youth spaces, at the age of 14, but was the only female fighter.
Ngamba said: “I was the only girl. It meant a lot to me to go there.”
“It gave me something to look forward to after school and kept me out of the streets where I could get into a bad situation.”
Ngamba’s Olympic dream got the green light when she received sponsorship from the Olympic Refugee Federation.
She will face Canada’s Tamara Thibault in the first round of the middleweight category.
Ngamba trained with Team GB athletes at the national institute in Sheffield ahead of the Games.
Read more at The Scottish Sun
And now there is hope she will finally win citizenship to join GB for the next Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028.
But Ngamba said: “I’m not really focusing on my future at the moment, I’m focusing on the present, on my medal, on winning.”
