The world’s best female boxer, who’s spent most of her career on the margins due to a lack of investment in women, is finally getting her due. A summit meeting with Katie Taylor could be next
Cecilia Brækhus, the world’s best female prizefighter, is right at home in Big Bear Lake, the high-altitude training refuge nestled in California’s San Bernardino Mountains. The placid, bucolic surroundings remind her of Bergen, the city tucked among the snowcapped peaks and glacial fjords on Norway’s west coast that she’s called home for as long as she can remember. So when the coronavirus pandemic scuttled her scheduled April fight with the American contender Jessica McCaskill, Brækhus was happy to shelter-in-place alongside trainer Abel Sanchez and wait for a new date rather than return to Europe and risk not being allowed back into the US.
“Closing the borders, the travel restrictions, all the health warnings,” Brækhus told the Guardian this week. “There was so much going on and everything was so uncertain, so I just said I’m going to stay here. Here I am safe and I’m healthy and I can be outside and I have nature around me. I’m in one of the safest places you can be.”
It’s like [women]can never do enough. It can be exhausting
