Bianca Elmir (born 24 July 1982) is an Australian boxer from Canberra.
She is better known as Bianca “”Bam Bam Elmir, or just “Bam Bam”, and is of Lebanese heritage.
She has been the Australian Flyweight Champion and the Oceania Boxing Bantamweight Champion. Since starting to box in 2009, Elmir aimed for one thing: to compete in the Olympics in 2012.
Bianca has always been passionate about sports and began playing soccer at an early age. In 2003, her soccer coach suggested that she try a sport with more aggression and suggested she take up a contact sport such as kick boxing. That began her kick boxing career which took her to the top of Australian Kick Boxing and Muay Thai.
In 2009 Elmir crossed over to boxing and very soon after that won the Oceania Championships in 2010 and the Australia Flyweight Championships in that and 2011. She also won the best women’s boxer trophy at the 2011 Bee Gee International Boxing Tournament in Finland. Elmir then focused on training for the London 2012 Olympics.
In February 2012, she won the 51-kilogram division at the Australian National Boxing Championships held in Hobart, Tasmania. However, after testing positive to banned diuretics furosemide and amiloride, she was stripped of this title. She had taken a diuretic before a long haul flight from Ireland to Australia to reduce swelling in her ankles and unbeknown to her, it contained the two banned substances.
Elmir was slapped with a 12 month doping ban just 14 hours before flying to China for the women’s world championships in April 2012. This disqualified her from competing at the London Olympics in 2012.
In April 2014, she competed in the Commonwealth Games trials in Fremantle, but did not qualify. After this competition she changed her boxing division weight to the 60 kg division.
Elmer has stated: “Getting punched in the face makes me feel alive. It sounds mental, it sounds like I’m a psychopath, but I’m not – I’ve checked,” she joked. “When I no longer like being punched in the face, that’s when I know it’s time to hang up the gloves.”
She said her main aim was to still qualify for the 2016 Olympics in Rio, Brazil. She failed to qualify for Rio when beaten by Shelley Watts in a qualifying tournament in 2015 and later losing to Nikhat Zareen in her opening bout of the 2016 AIBA Women’s World Boxing Championships.
Since then, Elmir has been based at Stockade Training Centre in Canberra and has focused on coaching both male and female boxers.
In July 2015, Elmir launched a boxing program in Canberra to help disadvantaged young people. She is also a champion of diversity for the ACT Human Rights Commission’s campaign “Diversity Goes With Our Territory.”
Outside of boxing, Elmir has been an executive assistant to an Australian state politician, ACT Greens politician Amanda Bresnan. Amanda said “She’s a part of the Green team and a part of our family”.
She has also spent a year working as a volunteer for a Youth Empowerment Program for Restless Development in the rural Eastern Cape in South Africa. Elmir is currently studying for a Masters in Globalisation, working with ‘at risk’ youth in Canberra and as a boxing coach and trainer.
A documentary film following Elmir’s path to Rio 2016 shown at Lollapalooza and was released in 2016.
