Gymnast Louis Smith

Louis smith, 30, is the only British gymnast to have won medals at three successive olympic Games. he won strictly Come Dancing in 2012 and is about to tour in music and dance show rip it up — the 70s. single, he lives in Peterborough.

YOU CAN’T TAKE A SHORTCUT TO SUCCESS

I must have been about seven years old when my PE teacher realised I had more than an aptitude for gymnastics. He would show me how to do a backflip, for example, and I would pick it up after a couple of attempts. Within a year, I knew this was going to be my destiny.

But nothing comes from nothing. I was told that smoking, drinking and girls would distract me from doing well.

I would go to my local pub and it would be full of people who’d tell me they could have achieved so much more as footballers, boxers and rugby players if only they had stuck at it and not strayed from the straight and narrow.

I wasn’t worried. I was passionate about what I was doing. And I knew that, to be the best I could be, I had to concentrate on training and stay away from life’s temptations.

I grew up on a council estate in Peterborough. my mum, Elaine, was a single parent. I can’t thank her enough for the sacrifices she made for me.

she took me and my older brother, Leon, to the gym six days a week for 11 years and waited there to bring us home. After school each day, she would pick me up and take me to the local sports centre. I would change in the back of the car as she drove and then train until 8.30pm.

that’s why it was nice to start paying her back by winning medals. Leon did sport recreationally, but he lived a life I didn’t want to live.

I like to push myself. so, when I got to about 19 years old and was beginning to win competitions, it would annoy me when people said how lucky I was.

Luck had little to do with it. I had worked as hard as I knew how, to get where I had got.

that’s when I decided to have a tattoo inked between my shoulder blades. It reads: ‘What I deserve, I earn.’