Matt Maher: Make or break as Kirstie Bavington fights to keep dreams alive
There surely aren’t too many athletes who can claim a support group with members so varied as Amir Khan, Beverley Knight, Jose Sa and the Wordsley Wasps under-12s junior football team.
But then Kirstie Bavington is not your typical athlete. PE teacher at Sedgley’s Beacon Hill Academy by day, at night – and in the very early morning – Bavington is a European boxing champion, who dedicates her life to training in pursuit of the dream she has harboured since childhood to one day become a full-time professional sportswoman.
It is a dream which remains alive after Bavington beat Marine Beauchamp in France last Saturday night to reclaim the EBU welterweight in a fight where she admits “everything was on the line”.
“It was all or nothing,” she says. “If I had lost it would have been the end of my career, pretty much.
“But I always knew it would not be the end. I had put too much work in.”
It was a couple of hours before the fight, sat in the back of a sports hall in Laval, a nondescript town roughly the size of Kidderminster some 180 miles west of Paris, that Bavington switched on her phone and was greeted by a video message from friend Keeley Whitcombe.
“I am gutted I can’t be there,” Whitcombe began. “But I just thought I would round up some messages off everyone just showing how loved and supported you really are.”
Then the words of encouragement began, from two-time world champion Khan, followed by award-winning singer Knight, several Wolves players including goalkeeper Sa, the Wordsley Wasps youngsters and many others, everyone either known or connected to Bavington in some way. The video concluded with well-wishes from her grandparents.
“It was incredible,” says Bavington. “Everyone came together to help put that video together and it really fired me up ahead of the fight.
