Strictly’s Nicola Adams recalls planning to kill her ‘violent dad’ at the age of 9
STRICTLY Come Dancing’s Nicola Adams has recalled planning to kill her “violent” dad at the age of nine.
The 37-year-old star confessed that she told her long-suffering mum Dee about the plot, which is what triggered her to leave her husband.
The boxing champ opened up about her “up and down” childhood in a new interview, admitting that her “controlling” dad banned her mum from going anywhere on her own, or having any friends – and used to physically abuse them both.
Nicola explained: “He’d get violent with both of us. Because I have ADHD, when I was younger I was very hyperactive, so it was very, very hard for me to keep still, especially when he was watching TV.
“So, I was always getting into trouble with my dad. Sometimes, I felt, I was getting hit for no reason.”
She continued to MailOnline: “It got to the point when I was around nine that I told my mum that I thought we needed to leave.
“I was watching a TV show about a family that was going through the same sort of situation we were. They ended up killing the father and burying him in the garden.
“I remember saying to my mum: ‘It’s going to be OK, I’ve seen a way we can get rid of Dad on TV, I just don’t know where we’re going to put the body because our garden is concrete.’
“That was a pretty big wake-up call for my mum.”
Thankfully, Nicola and Dee managed to get away, moving to a safehouse before being homed by the housing association.
And it was her childhood experience with her abusive dad that made her find her passion in boxing at the age of 13 – with her mum dropping her at a local club when she couldn’t find childcare.
Nicola went on to win two Olympic gold medals, from London and Rio – becoming the first British boxer to retain an Olympic title for 92 years by winning gold in the women’s flyweight final in 2016.
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The sports star also has a gold medal from the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
She has picked up first-place finishes in World Championships, European Championships and European Games.
Now, Nicola is taking on a different type of challenge on Strictly, where she is making history as one half of the first same-sex couple in the show’s history with professional dancer Katya Jones.