NICOLA Adams shrugged off a sluggish first round to cruise back into an Olympic final in Rio this evening.

Adams lost the opener on all three judges' cards against China's Ren Cancan, whom she beat to win her historic London 2012 gold medal.

But the Leeds 33-year-old turned on the style in the last three rounds of the flyweight semi-final contest to take it clearly and advance to her second straight final on Saturday.

There Adams, who has trained at Bradford-based Huggy's gym under Alywn Belcher, will face Sarah Ourahmoune of France, who won a split decision over Ingrit Valencia Victoria of Colombia.

Adams' belated return to form came as a relief to the Great Britain camp after she looked relatively unimpressive in her opening win over Tetyana Kob of Ukraine.

And she looked set to face another struggle after the first two minutes, in which the Chinese fighter was first to find her range and took it clearly.

But a series of right hands in the second turned the fight in Adams' favour and she skated away with the contest to move closer to another slice of history.