Almost 10 years have passed since Thomas Essomba walked out of the athletes’ village with nothing but a small bag of belongings and the possessions of fear and hope. The sunrise every morning reminds him of the survival act he undertook that day and the thousands of miles that separate his new life from the old one he left behind. He struggles at times to put the resilience it has required into words, after a decade spent buffeted along the breadline and around the country, but it is written in the scars on his skin and explained by the smile he somehow keeps in spite of it all.
It is hard to comprehend how all that fight is contained within the small figure now sitting quietly in the locker room of the Steel City Gym on the outskirts of Sheffield. Essomba almost shrinks into the jackets and bags cluttered on the wooden benches, safe among the smells of sweat and old leather that engulf him, not out of retreat but because this is where the away fighter has finally begun to feel at home. It has been an uphill battle of endurance, where politics and profit have never completely cut him loose and kept a ceiling over his success. But all these years later, the hope has stayed, the fear has evaporated, and Essomba is still fighting as hard as ever. The third act of his career has only just begun.
