Kenyan boxer Christine Ongare trains ahead of the Tokyo Olympics.
NAIROBI: A mother at 12, raised in Nairobi’s gritty suburbs to survive by her fists, Christine Ongare dreams of becoming the first African woman to win an Olympic medal in boxing.
The 27-year-old Kenyan will have her chance in Tokyo — her first Games, and a moment she still cannot believe is coming true.
“I thought many times about giving up… but I continued the journey because I believed where I came from was more difficult than where I was going,” Ongare told AFP after training at a gym in the Kenyan capital.
Standing at 1.57 metres and weighing 51 kilogrammes, Ongare cut a diminutive figure growing up in Eastlands, one of Nairobi’s rougher postcodes.
Life was not easy growing up in such an unforgiving environment. Ongare said girls…
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