Rioter on ‘Most Wanted’ list gets a second chance thanks to sport

 
Once a rioter on the police wanted list, Abdul Guthmy who has now turned his life around through sport, gets a cycling masterclass from former Olympic Champion Rebecca Romero at Herne Hill Velodrome today, prior to the London Cycling Sportive in June
GLENN COPUS
Lindsay Watling16 May 2013

A teenager who became notorious as one of the Evening Standard’s “12 Most Wanted” in the aftermath of the London riots has turned his life around through sport.

Abdul Guthmy, 18, got involved with a gang aged only 13 and was caught on camera kicking a police car and vandalising other property in Mare Street, Hackney, during the 2011 violence.

He eventually handed himself in and would have faced jail were it not for James Cook, a former British super-middleweight champion, his mentor and coach at the Pedro Amateur Boxing Club in Hackney, who decided to give him a reference.

Since then Mr Guthmy has used sport to get away from his old ways and attends City and Islington College where he is studying a two-year course in business and administration.

Kenyan-born Mr Guthmy, whose father brought him to the UK as a baby, has also signed up for this summer’s London Cycle Sportive and yesterday Olympic champion Rebecca Romero put him through his paces in a taster masterclass at Herne Hill velodrome.

After the training session, which he admitted was harder than he expected, Mr Guthmy recalled how “scared” he felt facing court, adding: “After my picture appeared in the paper, everything got serious. I thought my boxing career was over and realised how important it was to me.

“To anyone in a similar place, I would say, ‘There is no future in what you are doing hanging around the blocks on the estates. Get into a sport. If you put the time and work into it, it’s really worth it. It has shown me there’s more to life than causing trouble’.” Since his brush with the law, he has gone on to win the North East Boxing Championship at 57kg, a promise he made Mr Cook after the court hearing. But despite his high level of fitness, the masterclass was no breeze as he had never cycled on a diagonal slope.

“My legs are killing me,” he joked, although Romero said he had a “natural knack”. The sportive, organised by events firm Human Race and its charity partner Access Sport, is on June 30.

Competitors can take part in three distances, of 100 miles, 100 kilometres or 50 kilometres. Cyclists will pass many important landmarks from London’s Olympic history en route, finishing at Herne Hill, which served as the 1948 Olympic velodrome.

Charity ambassador Romero, who will be participating in the event, is the first British athlete and only the second woman in history to win Olympic medals in two different sports at the summer Games — cycling and rowing.

She said Mr Guthmy’s story “said it all” about how important sport can be in giving people a second chance. “It’s really, really fortunate that he found sport in this way,” she added. “It shows how we need to do more to target people sooner, so they don’t find themselves going down that road.

“Everyone has the potential to be good at something. It’s just about opportunity, isn’t it. It’s just unfair that not everyone gets support.”

For more information on how to enter the event, visit humanrace.co.uk.

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