Dr. Mark Prince OBE moved the audience at BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2024 with his powerful testimony about trusting Jesus Christ through tragedy.
During his acceptance speech for the Helen Rollason Award, he shared how faith helped him choose forgiveness over revenge after losing his son to knife violence.
Pain can either break us or shape us into vessels of hope. When tragedy strikes, our natural response is often anger and bitterness. Yet through faith, some people find strength to turn their deepest wounds into springs of healing for others.
Dr. Prince’s story shows us what happens when we let God guide our response to life’s hardest moments.
The story of Dr. Prince began with his own struggles. He left home at 15 and fell into drugs and crime. Boxing gave him a way out, leading him to win the WBO intercontinental light-heavyweight title in 1997.
He defended his title twice before losing to Dariusz Michalczewski in a world title fight in Germany in 1998.
Dr. Prince’s world changed forever in 2006 when his 15-year-old son Kiyan, a promising footballer at Queens Park Rangers academy, died while trying to stop a fight outside his school. Instead of letting grief consume him, Dr. Prince turned to his faith.
In his moving speech at the awards ceremony, he said, “I am proud that at a time when everything seemed like there was no hope, that I stayed believing and trusting that Jesus Christ my saviour was going to use me to do great things still in the name of my son.”
“I’m proud of the fact that I didn’t give into revenge,” he shared. “I didn’t give into bitterness and anger and unforgiveness and all the things which try to hold onto us as human beings.”
His words about choice touched many hearts: “God has given us a choice, we can choose no matter what happens to us…we’ve got a power of choice. We can choose how we deal with it. We haven’t got the choice of what happens, but we have the choice of how we deal with it.”
Through the Kiyan Prince Foundation, Dr. Prince has reached more than 100,000 young people with programs that use boxing to steer them away from knife crime. His work earned him an OBE in 2019.
Queens Park Rangers honored his mission by renaming their stadium after the foundation. Former England striker Les Ferdinand praised his impact: “What he brings is honesty and truth. In Mark, these boys can see themselves. They come from where he did.”
The Helen Rollason Award, now in its 25th year, honors people who show exceptional courage despite hardship.
Dr. Prince’s words remind us that life will throw trials our way, but we have the power to choose how we respond. When he lost his son, he chose to trust Jesus instead of giving in to bitterness.
His testimony shows us what happens when we surrender our pain to God and let Him guide our path.
Today, let’s choose to trust God even when life seems hopeless. Let’s ask God to use our trials, big or small, to shape us into vessels of hope for others.
WATCH: Dr. Mark Prince OBE Delivers Powerful Speech at BBC Sports Personality of the Year
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