Abdiwahid, 21, first wore the colours of Somalia, at the 2018 World Junior Championships.

She is having to work as never before to try and represent her country at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

With a skeleton support team, the criminology graduate works to fund her training sessions.

"It's very hard to train the same amount as other national teams because we train in our clubs, and then we travel to big events," she told olympics.com at her London home.

"It's very hard.

"But it makes you work ten times harder than the people who you are against."

What she refers to as her "best ever" event was the 2021 Africa Championships in Dakar, Senegal, where she missed a medal in the women’s under-57 kilogram category by one place, in losing to Morocco’s Nada Laaraj.

"It made me realise how much I wanted to win because I'm up against the best," she said.

"And it also made me realise how hard I train and what I need to do for the next step."

Abdiwahid, whose parents fled their home country to escape political instability and civil war, has welcomed the sporting opportunities that would not have been open to her had her parents remained in Somalia due to religious and societal pressures.

She’s among the new generation of Muslim women in sports challenging stereotypes, and aims to inspire more Somali women to take up combat sport.

"What inspires me is I am doing it for girls like me that don't have the opportunity," she added.

"I want to rise to the top and prove that, as a Somali girl with the headscarf, we can do it."