The Chief Executive of UK Sport, Sally Munday OBE, has praised GB Boxing for its role in helping to inspire the nation through sporting success.
The comments are in the guest Foreword Munday contributed to GB Boxing’s newly published Annual Review 2022-23, “Delivering sporting success in a changing world’ which can be viewed and downloaded HERE.
In the Review, Munday says: “The World Class Programme (WCP) for boxing is undoubtedly an important player in our family of sports. The performances of the boxers have been central to this, but equally importantly, boxing is a significant sport within the high-performance landscape as it plays a vital role in reaching many different communities and widening the appeal of Olympic sport.
“The diverse make-up of the athlete cohort at GB Boxing, which represents a wide-cross section of society, means it is a very effective sport at inspiring people in hard-to-reach communities and has the capacity to deliver positive outcomes that go beyond performance in the boxing ring.”
In a wide-ranging piece that assesses the wider impact of GB Boxing as an organisation, Munday describes it as “a beacon for the promotion of women’s sport, with the historic achievements of Nicola Adams and, more recently, Lauren Price and Karriss Artingstall”.
She goes on to praise GB Boxing’s role in establishing a new international federation, World Boxing, which is focused on ensuring that boxing remains on the Olympic programme at Los Angeles 2028 and beyond.
Munday says: “Sometimes organisations need to step forward and take action and I think the board and leadership of GB Boxing deserve great credit for their work in trying to preserve boxing’s place at the heart of the Olympic movement.”
In summing up the ethos of GB Boxing and her aspirations for the future of the World Class Programme (WCP) which is funded by UK Sport, she adds: “ A belief in putting the athletes first is one of the key principles that has underpinned so much of the success that GB Boxing has achieved in recent years.
“I have no doubt that, whatever challenges it comes up against in the future, the WCP for boxing will continue to thrive and its boxers will keep on inspiring the nation.”
