The day that changed Kingsley Okolie’s life dawned hot and humid. The 16-year-old Londoner (pictured above) was looking forward to his first taste of a real boxing gym. There was just one thing troubling him. The name of the club where he had his appointment was the Haringey Police Community Amateur Boxing Club. At that time, in the summer of 2002, Okolie and the police did not exactly see eye to eye. “As far as I was concerned, they didn’t like me and I didn’t like them,” he says.

There was a simple explanation for this. Though barely out of school, Okolie was, in his own words, a ­“violent thug” who had already seen the inside of Feltham young offenders’ institution. At the height of his precocious career, he and a few partners in crime controlled a hundreds-strong network of teenagers, skimming off “royalties” from attacks on individuals and raids on schools, pubs, internet cafés and the like across London. This 14-stone apprentice Godfather and his gang also roved the capital administering contract beatings at £100 a go for anyone with a grievance. “We were in the high seat,” he says. “The amount of violence at the time was incredible. It was brutal; it was disgusting; it was sickening.”

Life had started to go wrong for Kingsley Okolie when he was five: his father, a doctor in New York, died. The death brought about the break-up of the Okolie family. Kingsley’s mother took his three sisters to the UK, while he and an older brother went to live with grandparents in Nigeria. (A much-loved second brother died in infancy and is commemorated in a tattoo on Okolie’s right calf.) Okolie rejoined his mother in time to start secondary school in north London in 1998.

A muscular 5ft 5in middleweight with an iPhone, a flashing smile and a penchant for bright baseball caps, Okolie stands out from the crowd. He must have stood out even more as a short, hyperactive west African kid with little idea of local Haringey customs and, for the first few days, without a school uniform. He was immediately targeted by bullies. “It was a Wednesday,” he remembers. “I was wearing a white shirt. My mum had ironed it and I was looking spick and span. It was first break. It was the time that Panda Pop coloured drinks were popular. If they touched anything, they would stain. So, me being the new kid, this other kid – Bradley his name was – opened his Panda Pop and deliberately spilled it on me.”

Although break ended with Bradley struggling to extract himself from a metal bin that Okolie had thrown him into, the new kid kept being picked on until “it got to the stage where I felt I had to defend myself”. The day he left an older tormentor badly beaten was, Okolie says, the day that “I got respect. After that, the ­others didn’t want to mess with me. I thought that the more violent I was, the better I would be respected.”

Another significant moment came the following year. A friend brought a blue plastic bag into school and told him, “Check this out.” “He put it in my hand and it was heavy,” Okolie says. “I unwrapped it. It was a 9mm handgun. I asked him where he got it. He said to me, ‘I’m a badder man than you think.’ I looked up to him and thought, ‘That’s pretty cool, he’s got a gun.’” Soon Okolie was carrying a BB air gun in his school bag. “I knew that if I pulled it out in a crowd, no one was going to notice that it wasn’t a real pistol,” he says.

Before they had turned 15, Okolie and his gang were in the habit of walking around with £500 wads of cash in their pockets. “None of us were working,” he says, “so you can imagine the sort of things we were doing to get that kind of money. I didn’t see anything wrong with it. As far as I was concerned, that was life. You did what you could get away with. We had everything. We could get things other people in our class couldn’t have. It was respect. We were just being hard men. Just being the toughest of the toughs. That was more important than anything else. At the time, you don’t give a damn about your victims – it’s another funny story to tell, another credit. All the people feared us.”

Inevitably, the police began to take an interest in Kingsley – and, when he was 16, he was remanded to Feltham for several months. By the time, following his release, that he stood, suspicious and overweight, at the doorway of the Haringey gym, just yards from Tottenham Hotspur’s White Hart Lane football ground, he was going nowhere fast.

. . .

They had never met before, but Okolie could tell in an instant that the man running the gym was a police officer. “Look at how he stands,” he said to the youth-offending advocate who had accompanied him. “Policemen always stand on their heels. Look at his body posture. Look at his watch. They always have tight leather watch-straps.” What he didn’t know was how profound an effect this officer, Tottenham-born Gerry Willmott (pictured below), would have on his life.

A former Metropolitan Police boxing champion, Willmott opened the gym in 1999. He wanted, he says, to give local kids something to keep them out of trouble. Now in his mid-50s, he describes himself as “an old-fashioned policeman from the 1970s – I’m here to stop kids doing wrong”. Like all the best amateur boxing coaches, he combines devotion to his charges with discipline. “The club gives these kids opportunities and it gives them life skills,” he adds. “Going to a hotel, going to the airport, we take that for granted – but they don’t. If we are, say, driving to Liverpool, they are amazed there is so much countryside – because they’ve never been there. They have just seen it on telly.” The morning after we meet, he will be getting up at 4am to take the club’s best boxers to the airport – and he is not even going on the trip.

Willmott’s approach with Okolie was to tell him that he still had time to turn his life around, but that nobody could do it for him – he would have to do it himself. Meanwhile, lesson by lesson, he passed on to the boy the secrets of the boxer’s art. “Half of these kids, most of their problem is their attention spans,” Willmott says. “Once you find something they are interested in, you have half a chance.”

Okolie found the slow pace of progress deeply frustrating. On that first day, he says, “I wanted to knock someone’s head off.” Instead, all he was taught was how a boxer should step forwards. He returned the next day only to be told to repeat the same exercises. He persevered essentially for the same reason that he first stood up for himself in school. “I put it to myself, I’m not going to punk out,” he says. “They think I can’t do it; I’ll do it. I was doing it to prove something not to myself but to the youth offending people – and to Gerry.”

Willmott quickly realised that in spite of the excess weight, Okolie had the makings of a good boxer. “He is very intelligent,” he says. “He didn’t miss a trick in the gym. He knew who the leaders were. He has a good brain for boxing.” Even with this new distraction, however, the teenager found it impossible to turn his back on crime overnight. Four times he “derailed” and each time Willmott heard about it and banned him from the gym. The last time, he ended up back in prison for six months.

When he came out, Willmott refused to see him or talk to him. But by this time, Okolie had started to realise that belonging to the club mattered to him very much. He pleaded so hard for a last chance that eventually Willmott relented. “We gradually wore him down I think,” Willmott says. “If he didn’t change his behaviour, he was never going to get what he wanted – which was to be part of the club.” After staying out of trouble for a year, Okolie was given his first bout. He won the fight on points. Now club captain, he has boxed more than 40 opponents.

. . .

Haringey is one of a network of more than 60 police community clubs across England and Wales. Today these clubs provide much-needed leisure activities, including boxing, for an estimated 4,000-5,000 disadvantaged young people in inner cities and other deprived areas. “We expect them to target out-of-reach kids,” says Barry Jones, the recently retired policeman who has been the driving force behind the network’s development.

It was in the early 1990s that Jones, now 62, and three other officers hit on the idea of using a gym to tackle the growing problem of anti-social behaviour and crime committed by teenagers who aimlessly wandered the streets of inner London. “I was on a street-robbery team at the time, so I was working at the sharp end,” he says. The first place they used was a gym located in an actual police headquarters in Harrow. Various sports were trialled, but, Jones recalls, “Once we opened it up as a boxing gym, we were inundated with people.” Among the recruits were some of the “scallywags who we were dealing with on a day-to-day basis on the streets. I personally recall street robbers showing up. It broke down some huge barriers.”

It quickly became apparent that bigger premises, capable of operating for longer hours, were needed. Brent Council was approached and came up with a twice-fire-bombed gym “right in the heart of gun and knife crime in Harlesden NW10”, as Jones puts it. The place required a £70,000 refurbishment before it could open, but was eventually transformed into a state-of-the-art facility. Jones describes this as the “template” for the community clubs network, although it has since been absorbed by a teacher training college and is no longer being used.

The boxing clubs depend on the goodwill of police and other volunteers. Many of them have been part-funded by a publishing initiative devised by Jones. This involves producing educational books aimed at junior-school pupils on subjects such as bullying, truancy, gangs, knives and substance abuse. Companies sponsor the booklets and may also receive branding rights in return. The scheme currently generates about £60,000 a year.

The organisation has recently secured substantial police and Home Office funding to begin delivering the “Stolen Lives” project, which is designed to address issues related to guns, gangs and knife crime, to schools in Greater London and elsewhere. It is also planning to take boxing into schools via a variety of programmes aimed at pupils of different ages. “I make no apology for saying that boxing is the vehicle with which we have found we can best engage the out-of-reach kids,” says Jones. “Football and basketball are good. We have even tried midnight street hockey. But boxing beats the lot.”

. . .

The realisation by police officers such as Jones that the sport could help combat teenage delinquency and crime is part of the explanation for a renaissance in British amateur boxing after years of decline. Paul King, chief executive of the Amateur Boxing Association of England (ABAE), puts current membership at more than 18,000, up from 7,800 in 2005, of whom “about half” are under 16 years of age. These are individuals who, if they wish, can box competitively. The number engaged in some form of recreational boxing activity, including non-contact boxing – featuring punchbags, hand pad boxing, shadow boxing – may be as high as 150,000. The sport is also returning to schools, with government figures showing that 6 per cent of state schools are offering boxing, up from 1 per cent five years ago. Participation by women, too, is rising sharply.

Such figures are still a far cry from the 1950s, when there were around 70,000 registered amateur boxers and more than 50,000 boys entered the annual English schools championships. They do, however, mark a significant shift in momentum. From the 1960s until four or five years ago, amateur boxing in Britain was in a state of more or less continuous decline, to such an extent that, had it sunk much lower, it might have disappeared.

The person blamed, more than any other, for giving the sport its first shove down this slippery slope is Edith Summerskill – later Baroness Summerskill – a campaigning Labour MP in the 1940s and 1950s. Her book The Ignoble Art, published in 1956, painted a graphic picture of the damage the sport could inflict, both physically and in its psychological impact on spectators. Nowadays, her core argument – that fighting in all its forms should be controlled for the sake of world peace – has a utopian ring. But in its day, at the midpoint between the second world war and flower power, it struck a chord and helped to precipitate a drastic reduction in boxing in schools.

In recent years, the sport’s most influential opponent has been the British Medical Association, which has been calling for a total ban on amateur and professional boxing since the early 1980s. It bases its stance on medical evidence that, it says, reveals “the risk not only of acute injury but also of chronic brain damage”. In a briefing paper released in 2007 it says that doctors are “gravely concerned about the risk of serious impairment to those who survive a career in boxing”, adding that “all boxers are at risk of acute and chronic brain and eye injuries”. It also cites a 2005 statement by the World Medical Association that “boxing can result in death and produce an alarming incidence of chronic brain injury”. The BMA acknowledges, however, that evidence regarding amateur boxers – who typically fight four two-minute rounds per bout, compared with up to 12 three-minute rounds in professional boxing – is “far less clear-cut”.

In 1995, in the wake of a 1993 BMA report, The Boxing Debate, 60 MPs backed the introduction of a bill banning the sport. James Callaghan, the MP behind the move, cited the deaths of 361 boxers worldwide since 1945. “The blows are intended,” he told the Commons. “Hitting one another is deliberate. That point, no matter how trite, distinguishes boxing from all other sports.”

. . .

Probably the most significant single moment in British amateur boxing’s recent fightback came on August 29 2004 in the Peristeri boxing hall in Athens. That was the day when 17-year-old Amir Khan won an Olympic silver medal. The charismatic Khan was the only British boxer to qualify for Athens and the British public had followed his exploits with mounting anticipation. Within a year, Sport England – the funding body for sport in England – had increased the ABAE’s annual core funding more than 12-fold, from £42,000 to £540,000. “That gave us the opportunity to put in place development officers, a regional coaching structure and a far more robust administration,” says King. Four years on and bolstered by a further £5m of funding from UK Sport, the elite funding body, eight British boxers qualified for last summer’s Beijing ­Olympics. They eventually captured one gold medal and two bronzes, the best boxing haul for 52 years.

Khan’s success would not have had the same impact, however, had it not been for an important evolution in New Labour’s attitude to sport. Senior figures from Tony Blair and Gordon Brown down had always been sports fans. But by 2004, there was also a growing recognition of sport’s capacity to help achieve broader social goals, such as improving health and combating obesity. This development came about thanks to the tenacious advocacy of Lord Carter, the former Sport England chairman, and Richard Caborn, the long-serving former sports minister, both of whom saw health issues as key to securing more government funding.

With perceptions of boxing still largely conditioned by its venal and unforgiving professional guise, this sort of public health mission was always likely to be something the sport would struggle to benefit from, even at an amateur level. This was in spite of the efforts made by amateur boxing to address safety issues: cutting the length of the rounds in top-level bouts from three to two minutes each and devising non-contact activities to give children a taste of the sport in virtually risk-free conditions.

Another social concern – gangs, drugs and knife crime – was, however, steadily working its way up the political agenda. And since boxing had already been identified by policemen such as Barry Jones as having a particular resonance in inner cities, this was an issue it was uniquely well-placed to tap into. As Khan’s medal success demonstrated, the sport could also act as a common reference-point for young Muslims and other religious and ethnic groups, something that further strengthened its case. “Boxing most definitely creates a special bond between those who practise it,” says Mohammed Jameel, a member of Woking Boxing Club in Surrey, who also supervises training and sparring sessions for youngsters at a hall at the local Shah Jahan Mosque (built in 1889, making it one of England’s oldest). “The sport disciplines people,” Jameel adds. “It makes you more confident in yourself so you feel you don’t need to pick quarrels.”

The shift in political attitudes to the sport is brought into focus by the case of Tessa Jowell, the current Olympics minister. In the 1995 House of Commons debate referred to earlier, she was one of the 60 MPs who voted in favour of James Callaghan’s failed attempt to introduce a ban. Today, she says she “certainly would not support a ban on boxing. While I accept that the issue of lasting damage remains,” she explains, “I am also assured that the protective equipment is greatly improved and used more regularly. There is also very clear evidence of benefit to boys, especially the kind who get involved in gangs. It seems to be the case that kids can box more safely … I would really like to see boxing clubs all over the country, particularly in inner cities.”

The sport is also gathering support in the teaching profession. At Jubilee International High School in Addlestone, a one-time problem school in an underprivileged pocket of otherwise well-heeled Surrey, non-contact boxing has been introduced as part of a broader pupil motivation initiative – and staff members are even being encouraged to use boxing references to make sure their pupils understand what they are saying to them. “There is an enormous problem with the metaphors used by teachers when trying to change the behaviour of young people,” says Gareth Balch, the principal. “Fairly quickly during an incident, teachers start to use phrases, such as ‘Putting the cart before the horse’, that have no meaning due to the rapid technological change in society. This means pupils often do not have a clue why they are in trouble.” According to Balch, the use, wherever possible, of boxing language in such situations, combined with so-called “Boxercise” classes, has sparked a big improvement in pupils’ attitudes towards school. “This really works,” he says, adding that the programme has also had some “major unintended positive effects”, helping to get hyperactive students off medication and to make girls more assertive. The school recently passed its first Ofsted report for several years.

. . .

Back in north London, Okolie now works at a branch of Cash Converters and has captained the boxing club in matches as far away as Ghana and Sweden. These days, it is rare for him to have £500 of cash in his pocket – but he does wear a Tag Heuer watch. According to Willmott, his mentor, he is “always telling people to pick up litter and shut doors”. He has become a dab hand at cooking.

When Okolie goes to youth clubs nowadays, it is to try to stop teenagers aspiring to the sort of life that he used to lead. “I believe that as I have played a part in destroying,” he says, “I must play a part in restoring.” As a storyteller, he is a natural and I have no doubt that he makes a convincing public speaker. In his own words: “It’s not like I read it in a book. I have come from it. I was it.”

Okolie knows he can never completely escape the past. He bears the scars of knife wounds and must cope with inevitable chance encounters with former victims. He tells how he was once giving a talk in the wake of the killing of Damilola Taylor in south London. “As I was speaking there,” Okolie says, “I looked four rows down and there was a boy I had once beaten up. I beat him so bad he had tremendous facial injuries. He broke my heart. I felt sick. I remember saying, ‘I know I’m not a stranger to a few of you in this room and I am sorry for what I did.’”

It is impossible to imagine that he would revert to his old ways. “Now,” Willmott says, “he would give you the last drop from his water bottle. When he first came to the club, you could be dying in the desert and he wouldn’t give it to you.”

Boxing has taught Okolie how to redeem himself – and in doing so it might have stumbled upon its own route to redemption.

.................................................

“It kept me off the streets”
Frankie Gavin

Frankie Gavin is part of the explanation for boxing’s revival. As England’s first world amateur champion – a distinction he achieved at lightweight in 2007 – he is one of a string of new role models for young boxers. By rights, he should also have been in Beijing this summer as part of Britain’s most successful Olympic boxing squad in 52 years. But he didn’t make his designated weight and missed out. The gold medal went to Alexey Tishchenko, a Russian boxer Gavin beat en route to his world title. He recently confirmed he was turning professional.

Sitting in a chilly but well-equipped gym in his native Birmingham, 24-year-old Gavin remembers how his next-door neighbours coaxed him into trying boxing on his 12th birthday. “They put me in the ring with one of my mates and we sparred with each other,” he says in a sometimes mumbled accent. “They said we were naturals.” He was soon hooked.

His first bout came little more than a month later. “I lost it to be fair. His name was O’Callaghan. O’Callaghan from Hard and Fast in Bradford … It was only by a point, a really close fight it was. Whether I won or lost, I was just happy to say, ‘Yes, I’m a boxer now.’ Then I went and won about 13 on the trot.”

The son of a single mother, Gavin has one brother, who works as a plumber. School was never a priority. “When the bell used to go for school all I could think about was the gym,” he says. “I wasn’t the cleverest, but I wasn’t the thickest. I was just like average … But I go back to school now and give trophies out and stuff like that.”

He firmly believes that boxing can help kids stay out of trouble. “It kept me off the streets because I was always at the gym every night. By the time I got home, I’d be training that hard I’d be knackered so I’d have to get into bed. It does keep you disciplined. When I was, like, 17 looking around for girls, I’d always have one eye on my watch, just for the gym. Never be late for the gym.”

.................................................

“Nothing is so challenging”
Sara Knieper

Sara Knieper, arrives at the north London gym with a £30,000 cello strapped to her back. The 29-year-old, a postgraduate music student, started boxing two years ago while studying at university in her native Germany. “I have done lots of different sports, but nothing is so challenging,” she says, following a vigorous workout. “You have to be fit in every way – and the moment you go into the ring to fight against somebody, your adrenaline is…” She makes a sound like a rocket taking off. “It’s really exciting.”

Women’s boxing in Britain is growing fast after being almost unheard of 15 years ago. In 2005, according to Paul King, chief executive of the Amateur Boxing Association of England, only 50 women were allowed to compete in the ring. Today, there are more than 600 registered female ABAE members.

The sport is clearly benefiting from a broader transformation in attitudes in the late 20th century. Once, the participation of women would have been beyond the pale. Today, there are few, if any, activities from which it is thought acceptable to exclude participants on grounds of gender. Boxing, however – among the last male-only strongholds to fall – remains an unusual and, to some, a daring pastime for women, but perhaps that enhances its appeal.

Women are not yet able to box at the Olympics. However, the International Boxing Association recently submitted a formal proposal to have women’s boxing included in the 2012 Games in London. Even if that application fails, it now seems only a matter of time before the first female Olympic boxing champion is crowned.