Feature and Insight
Supporting our next sporting heroes For most people, knowing you would rank 5th in the world at your chosen sport, might give you a bit of swag. If this world ranking was achieved at 14, one could be forgiven for being a touch arrogant. Particularly if you’ve been talent spotted at the age of 8, had the opportunity to meet and compete with your sporting heroes and if you’d broken 3 world records. Superiority abounds! Except, that is, if you are Lauren Booth.
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What’s astonishing about Lauren is not how she’s overcome bacterial meningitis in her infancy, battled with cerebral palsy, hearing and mobility challenges to become a world class athlete, it’s how sincerely modest and considered she is with it all. Being given a specially modified trike by the Meningitis Trust at 4 to ease the toddler’s increasing frustration at her lack of independence, whet Lauren’s appetite for wheels. She was soon determined she would ride her older brother’s bike. When she firmly rejected the condition that she’d need stabilizers, Lauren’s mother, Lisajayne played the ‘learn by your own mistakes’ parenting card and let Lauren get on the 2 wheeler, fully expecting to have to apply plasters and ‘I told you so’ shortly thereafter. She didn’t. To Lisajayne’s astonished joy, Lauren aced the bike from the off and was soon an enthusiastic member of the Chippenham Wheelers cycle club.
