STRICTLY LAUREN
on her nan’s battle with dementia and how she has always had a fierce will to win
I’ve had such a good year this year. I’m very focused on sport and have the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics coming up. “Right at this moment, if I lost a gold in Tokyo because I had a boyfriend then quite a few people would look at me and say, ‘Um, did you make the right choice?’.
“I have had on-and-off relationships before,” she added. “But I’m always on the move, in different countries and training times are awkward. You need someone very understanding.”
The more convincing story to tell her nan, though, might be this one – about her unorthodox method for capturing the look of love in last Saturday’s waltz.
There was barely a dry eye in the house during the moving sequence, yet the secret to that convincing performance wasn’t chemistry with 23-year-old AJ, apparently, but with her parents’ German shepherd, Meric-Belle.
Lauren said: “AJ was saying, ‘Lauren, you need to look at me lovingly’. It took longer to teach me to be romantic than it did the dance.
“So we kept using Meric, because she’s who I love most in the world. I imagined I was looking at her.”
It’s little wonder Lauren’s lifestyle has never allowed for much more than on-and-off relationships.
She was only 14 when she competed in the Beijing Paralympics in 2008 as a swimmer, and 18 at London 2012.
After that, she switched to the paratriathlon and lifted silver in Rio in 2016.
She admitted she has always been fiercely determined.
Born with one lower arm missing, she described how she has always refused to let anyone help her.
Lauren said: “I rode a bike at an early age, I was swimming.
“There were things that took longer – shoelaces, tying hair, painting nails – but I did them,” she added, demonstrating how she holds the brush in the crook of her arm.
She also salsa dances as a hobby, although she insisted that the rumours about her teaching it aren’t true, and said it’s nothing like the ballroom style.
Lauren added: “I may have to unlearn some stuff. It might be a disadvantage.” Speaking of her disability, Lauren said: “They don’t know what caused it and it was a bit of a shock for mum (Sharon) and dad (Adrian).”
Predictably, she stood out at school and although she stops short of using the word bullying, she said: “Kids will be kids. I was fully aware I was the one-armed girl. It’s not a problem.
“I was chubby, geeky, a good girl – and had one arm. I really was chubby.
“I really like my food and I think sport is the saving grace.
“I lost weight when I started swimming every day at 12.”
But the overriding key to her success, she added, has been confidence.
And that was cemented at 14 when she won a scholarship to go to Mount Kelly, a prestigious boarding school in Devon that specialises in swimming – where she ditched the prosthetic arm she had always worn.
Lauren said: “There were three other swimmers with their arm missing. They were like, ‘Why are you wearing an arm?’. One day I just forgot.”
Now, Lauren only wears one when she’s on her bike.
She said: “I won’t wear one on Strictly. It’s probably safer without and I don’t need it for balance or lifting things, it would just be for aesthetics.”
She insists going without hasn’t caused any problems so far. But she’s terrified of the lifts in tonight’s routine – a Charleston – because they don’t involve any hands at all. “I could die,” she said.
But I suspect she might be brilliant.
This is the woman who achieved A-grades at school while training for two Paralympics, then completed a BA and master’s in business.
Not to mention scooping gold and mastering a waltz in two days last week, back to back. “I just do things,” Lauren said. Like her nan, she added, and her nan’s mum, her great nan Doreen – who is still going great guns aged 97 – she is made of strong stuff.
“Apparently it runs in the female side,” she said.
Strictly Come Dancing is on BBC1 at 6.30pm tonight, and 7.15pm tomorrow.
AJ and I are single & get on well but I don’t expect any romance. I am focused on my sport