Home Turf Ghana

The idea behind Home Turf was to give travellers who train seriously a way into a sport through the places and people that built it, so the trip had to feel like a training camp first and a holiday second. Boxing in Accra was the natural place to start, because the city's neighbourhood gyms have produced generations of Ghanaian champions and Joshua Buatsi's own family roots gave the group a genuine connection to that story.

Palm Heights Athletics wanted to extend its athlete community beyond Grand Cayman and create content and press moments that no hotel programme had delivered before. Our job at Protean Sports was to design the itinerary, secure access to the gyms and coaches, manage the group on the ground, and make sure every session gave something back to the local boxing community.

Over four days the group trained twice daily with local coaches, and each evening was built around Accra's food, art and fight culture so that the programme felt rooted in the city.

Behind the schedule sat the logistics that made it work: visas and yellow fever waivers for the group, private vans and drivers across the city, custom Home Turf t-shirts, totes and stickers, and hand wraps, electrolytes and water bottles for every guest.

Joshua was born in Accra before moving to the UK as a child, and went on to win Olympic bronze for Great Britain at Rio 2016 before building his professional career at light heavyweight. Bringing him home gave the trip its heart, because the group was training in the city that produced him with someone who could open doors that would otherwise stay closed.

He was with the group across the week, training in the sessions, introducing the coaches and fighters he knows, and giving guests a personal way into Ghanaian boxing culture. The Sunday visit to the orphanage he supports was his idea, and it gave the group a view of Accra that no itinerary could have offered.

The group stayed at the Kempinski, which gave everyone a comfortable base to recover between sessions, and every day was designed to take them out of it and into the neighbourhoods where Ghanaian boxing lives. Training moved between indoor clubs and open-air rooftop gyms, and the culture sat alongside it, from Jay Kammy's film screening at ArtHaus Accra to Nana Danso's art workshop and a fight night at Accra Sports Stadium, where the group watched the sport they had been training in all week.

Food was treated as part of the experience too, with dinners at Buka, Nyanibia Collective, Treehouse and Palm Moments introducing the group to the city's restaurants and ending the trip with a closing party. The result was a trip that guests could only have had through the relationships we built with the gyms, coaches and creatives of Accra.

Ghana has produced more world boxing champions than any other African nation, and much of that history was made in the small community gyms the group trained in. Starting the Home Turf Series there meant the format was grounded in a real sporting heritage from its first edition, with a headline athlete whose own story began in the same city.

The trip also sat naturally with each partner. For Palm Heights Athletics it extended an athlete-led community that already valued mixing elite sport with culture, and for Joshua it was a chance to bring people home and give back to the gyms that shaped Ghanaian boxing. The creative side was led by people close to that culture, with Joshua Buatsi and Protean Sports curating the programme together, so the content and the experience felt authentic to Accra from the inside.

Every session was coached by a local trainer and run in their own gym, so guests trained shoulder to shoulder with the young fighters and members who use those spaces every day. The programme covered physical conditioning, technique and tactics, padwork and bag work, a hill or beach run and a port-side steps challenge, giving the group a full week of boxing training built around the way Accra's clubs actually work.

Giving back was built into the budget from the start. Every gym the group trained in received a donation, the group brought kit and hand wraps for the fighters, and on the Sunday Joshua Buatsi took everyone to visit the orphanage he supports with groceries and toys for the children.

The trip was designed to create commercial value beyond the week itself, and boxing merchandise was the clearest route to it. It started with the Home Turf Ghana t-shirts, totes and stickers made for the group, and grew into a full Palm Heights Athletics boxing range designed around the Ghana story. The pieces carry the Black Star, an "Accra, Ghana" vest, boxing shorts in the national colours, a woven kente patch and branded gloves, and the shorts are co-branded with Tropical Fitness.

This turned the cultural capital of the trip into a product people could buy, gave the partner gyms and athletes a visible platform, and gave Palm Heights Athletics a revenue line connected directly to its programming.

The relationship did not end when the group flew home. Palm Heights Athletics later hosted Coach Ofori Asare and Ghanaian fighters on the ground in Grand Cayman, returning the hospitality the group had received in Accra and giving the fighters access to the training environment, recovery and athlete community that Palm Heights is known for.

That return visit closed the loop on the first Home Turf edition. A group travelled to Accra to learn from the home of a sport, and the athletes from that home were then welcomed into theirs, which is the kind of lasting two-way relationship the series is built to create.

The trip earned coverage in two titles that rarely sit side by side, with Complex covering it from the sport and culture angle and Vogue from the style and travel angle.

“Expanding these opportunities through athlete-led exploration of the home of a particular sport, and its culture, means we have the opportunity to amplify the message of the power of sport.”

Founder, Protean Sports, in Complex

Home Turf Ghana became one of the first media access trips of its kind, with coverage in Vogue and Complex and a full stills and film library from the trip. It also proved the Home Turf Series as a format that Protean Sports can take to other sports and cities, pairing a headline athlete with the local gyms, coaches and culture that shaped them.