‘The Olympics are for Nan and Grandad, they told me to reach for the moon’
The road to the Olympics may be longer than usual but world champion boxer Lauren Price is determined to get there, as Katie Sands reports
“IF IT wasn’t for them then I wouldn’t have achieved anything, really. I couldn’t really tell you where I’d be or what I’d be doing.”
World champion boxer Lauren Price tries to put into words what her grandparents mean to her, and what they’ve given her.
Since the age of eight, the former world champion kickboxer and Wales footballer Lauren has always wanted to compete in the Olympics.
Of course, that should have taken place this year – but coronavirus means Tokyo will now stage the showpiece sports tournament next year instead.
Backing her all the way are her beloved grandparents, Derek and Linda, who raised Lauren in Ystrad Mynach, near Caerphilly.
“I lived with my nan and grandad since I was three days old,” Lauren, 26, explains. “I was fortunate to be able to go out and have supportive – I say ‘parents’ but grandparents – to back me and push me.
“They’ve always encouraged me. I remember, at the start, my nan didn’t want me to fight but she always supported me.
“When I was boxing or kickboxing, she’d come and watch and she’d have her head in her hands for the whole time I was fighting.”
Her nan used to say “reach for the moon, and if you fall short you’ll land on the stars”, something that has always stuck with Lauren since.
“She knows from the age of eight it’s been my dream to go to an Olympic Games and she knows it means everything to me.
“I remember in 2012 seeing the Olympics boxing on telly, Nicola Adams’ example winning a gold medal, I just thought ‘that’s something I want to do’.
“It means everything to them as well, because they’ve started me off on that journey and it would be nice for me to achieve that for them.
“I don’t even think I would have been into sport [without them].”
Her grandad was “football mad”, and it’s through him that Lauren started playing football aged eight for a boys’ club, Fleur de Lys.
“I was just mad about sport.
“He got me into football but I went to kickboxing just to burn energy – I think I was about eight when I started.
“My nan always used to say I was a hyperactive kid and she was like ‘you need something to calm you down’, so I also went down the kickboxing route to start with, became four-time world kickboxing champion and European champion.
“When I went, I wasn’t very good at the start, like anything I suppose, but when I put my mind to something, if I want to do it then I’ll do it.
“I was always quite big for my age, so from the age of 12 I was fighting adults. I just didn’t care – I wanted to be thrown in the mix, a bit of a ruffian, really.
“It’s the same on the football pitch, playing centre-half, that’s why I’ve got two scars on my head because I’ve
gone up and got the ball and come back down on someone.
“I was one of them going in for slide tackles, I’d love playing on a rainy day, it was all about the grit and the graft.”
Combining kickboxing with playing as a defender at Cardiff City Women, Lauren helped them win the Welsh Women’s Premier Football League in 2012-13 as she was voted the competition’s Player of the Season.
By then she had already been capped by Wales, making her senior debut in 2012, before being asked to captain Wales U-19s the following year.
With one eye on her Olympic dream, Lauren soon switched from kickboxing to boxing while still playing football.
Aged 17, with just one amateur fight under her belt, she won bronze at both the Women’s European and Youth World Championships in 2011.
But playing two sports meant she soon had a tough decision on her hands.
“In 2014, Colin Jones – the Welsh coach – said, ‘You’ve got the opportunity to go to Glasgow Commonwealth Games, but it means you need to decide what you want to do – do you want to go down the football route or stay with boxing?
“I thought if boxing doesn’t work out I can always go back to playing football. I went to Glasgow in 2014, came away with a bronze there – I was unlucky in the semi-final because I lost to the world champion on a split decision.”
Her medal meant she made history by becoming the first female Welsh boxer to win a Commonwealth Games medal. She later claimed another bronze at the 2016 European Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria.
On Australia’s Gold Coast, she won gold for Wales at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, out-boxing home favourite Caitlin Parker, also securing a bronze at 2018’s World Championships after losing her semi-final on a split decision.
In October 2019, Lauren won gold at the Women’s World Boxing Championships in Russia after a successful appeal, and now looks set to go to the Olympics as one of the favourites to claim a title in Tokyo.
Lauren was in London in March ready for a boxing match when everything was shut down.
With her grandfather aged over 70 and isolating, Lauren couldn’t live with them while training so – sharing a flat with fellow GB boxer Karris Artingstall – the pair stayed in Sheffield to give them the best chance of returning to training at the GB Boxing gym, based at the English Institute of Sport and known as The Lions Den.
Lauren is one of more than 1,100 athletes on UK Sport’s World Class Programme, which allows her to train full-time and benefit from pioneering technology, science and medical support, powered by National Lottery funding.
The boxing programme is presided over by Rob McCracken, who trains world heavyweight Anthony Joshua.
“To be fair to GB, they were amazing. They sent out strength and conditioning equipment and I was basically doing weights using wheelie bins and squat racks and stuff like that.
“We were doing Zoom sessions on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday – I was staying on it, I just needed to tick over.
“I suppose when you’re on it all year you need the right time to peak, so as soon as I had the nod that the Olympics was being pushed back a year, I kind of took my foot off the gas a bit. Still ticked over and kept in shape, try and stay focused and look at the bigger picture, but I was still going running, still lifting weights and doing the Zoom sessions.
“But couldn’t spar and stuff like that, we weren’t in a gym situation so when I came back I knew it’d take a couple of weeks to get the timing and distance back, but within a couple of weeks I felt back to normal.
“Fitness was there, champion it doesn’t take long to get back, so I’m feeling in good shape.”
It’s a far cry from the situation Lauren found herself in when she was playing for Wales, with the defender earning 52 caps.
“When I was with Wales, I was a taxi driver as well so I’d be in camp through the week and then Friday and Saturday nights I’d have to work on the roads taxi driving, working long hours. It’s hard. To do the training I do now I couldn’t work alongside.
“With Wales, I wasn’t really getting paid and stuff like that, so I was trying to train through the week, and when you’re trying to train it’s hard to have a job through the week.
“So the only other option I had was to work for a taxi company on a Friday and Saturday night, but they were long hours.
“In the end, you could tell it was catching up with me because I was training through the week and working through the nights just to have money, but I had the support of my nan and grandad as well. I was living at home and if it wasn’t for them supporting me, it’d be impossible.”
The GB world-class facilities, coaching, training, support network of physios and sports scientists mean Lauren is competing in a very different environment nowadays.
“Being able to focus 100% on myself, what I need and training, if it wasn’t for National Lottery I wouldn’t be able to do that. I’ve experienced how tough things are when you’re trying to train alongside working. It’s impossible, so massive thank-you to them.”
Next summer, Lauren will be looking to add to the 864 Olympic and Paralympic medals won by Great Britain and Northern Ireland athletes since National Lottery funding started in 1997.
“Being an amateur boxer, the Olympics is the pinnacle and it’s the biggest sporting event in the world. For me to go the Olympics, I owe it to my grandparents just for how they’ve supported me and I know they’re proud of me now, but if I can get that gold medal they’ll be super- proud.
“It’s been my dream since I was eight years old, so that’s not going to change.”