In April 2024 it was confirmed that Amy "Baby Canelo" Broadhurst, Ireland’s world, European and Commonwealth Games gold medalist, would be switching allegiance to Great Britain and attempting to qualify for the Paris Olympics that summer.

But Broadhurst, who has a British passport because her dad was born in England, would not book her spot as she instead lost in the quarter finals of her qualifying event in May that year. The failure meant that Team GB had no women in the 60kg category in Paris.

For more than seven years, Cambridge native Shona Whitwell had been working towards making that spot her own and much of the outcry around the maneuver to enlist Broadhurst centered around GB’s decision to send one of their long-term projects out into the cold as a result.

“Genuinely, it floored me for a long time,” Whitwell tells The Ring. “But if you stay in that hole for too long, it just won’t get you anywhere will it?”

After having her Olympic dream crushed, Whitwell decided her only option was to go professional. She turned over in April last year but it has not been an easy road for 28-year-old “Showtime” Shona.

These days, she does not give much thought to the controversial climax to her career in the unpaid code. There is no rhetoric around using it to fuel her ambitions as a pro nor does she harbor any ill will towards Broadhurst or those who took the chance to qualify out of her hands.

But there is no denying that she was collateral damage in the whole situation and it goes without saying that the opening stages of her professional career would have been extremely different had she turned over as an Olympian, especially if she had returned from Paris with a medal.

Instead, she has had to grind. Now 16 months since her debut, Whitwell is 3-0 with 2 KOs after a pair of outings at York Hall, Bethnal Green and one in a hotel in Northampton.

“I feel like at the very beginning of turning pro I was still very sour about it all,” she admits.

“It was still fresh for me then and I think that's why I took a bit of a step back, had a bit of time off to regroup and gather myself. At the time everyone was shocked but people move on quickly but I can’t because it’s actually happening to me.

“So now I'm just trying to put it in the past because you could sit here all day and be like, ‘oh, what if this? What if that?’ But really I can't just keep feeling like a victim or feeling so disheartened about things.

“I've got to push on to what's ahead. I know what happened does make things a lot harder for myself and that is a shame but what do I do? Quit. No. All of that is in the past now and I have dreams and aspirations that I am working towards myself.”

In the wake of her own Olympic heartbreak, Broadhurst took a break from boxing to have her first child, Luca. In the last weekend of May, she returned to the ring for the first time in two years and picked up gold at the Eindhoven Cup. She will once again attempt to qualify for Team GB at the LA Olympics in 2028.

Whitwell, meanwhile, is scheduled to box Spain-based Brit, Victoria Emma Lomax, on the Top Tier show at Brentwood Centre, Essex on July 12. As ever, the 28-year-old, who is trained by former world title challenger John Ryder, sees the outing as a shop window.

As a free agent, Whitwell has found opportunities hard to come by but she hopes her ability to stop opponents, not always prevalent in women's boxing, could open new doors.

“I'm just pushing on, staying focused and being positive,” Whitwell says. “I've always done it the hard route anyway, even to make it to that No. 1 spot on GB.

“The whole environment there and the pressure that came with it was tough and I've just got to use all that experience to push on into the pros now.

“It hasn’t been easy because as a free agent you've got to sell tickets and it's a lot harder route than obviously being signed to a promoter. So for me, that is the goal this year, to get signed by a promoter. We're keeping people updated, we're having the right chats, but it's just about waiting to get that interest.

“It's frustrating because of my pedigree and my background. I thought someone would like to sign me but we'll just have to keep pushing on, doing it the hard way.

“At the moment I'm still fairly new to the game, so I'm just building and building. I just need someone to take a chance on me and give me the opportunities that I deserve.

“I’ve learned that all you can do is just keep winning, keep pushing it in their face, keep pestering them and hopefully something will come of it.”