Lauren Price: The girl who reached for the moon and came down with Olympic boxing gold

In the early 2000s, an eight-year-old was asked to write down three goals as part of a school project.

She wrote that she wanted to become a kickboxing world champion, play international football for Wales and go to the Olympic Games.

Her teacher raised an eyebrow, but the girl's grandmother told her to let the girl dream.

She had always told her granddaughter to reach for the moon and that if she fell short, she would land on the stars.

By the time she was 27, the girl had achieved all three of her goals.

And then she went even further. Not only did she go to the Olympics, but the middleweight won a gold medal.

This is the story of Lauren Price: Olympic boxing champion.

Price was only three days old when it was decided her parents would not be able to look after her.

Her nan, Linda, and granddad, Derek, took her in and raised her. Their terraced house in the south Wales town of Ystrad Mynach became Price's home too.

They used to call her Tigger.

The young Price had so much energy that her sporting journey began as a means of helping her burn off some steam.

"She was an adorable child - always smiling, always happy," Linda recalls. "But always very, very busy - into everything.

"When she was very young, she was obsessed with football and running around. On a wet day she'd get a football and she'd be kicking it up and down the stairs.

"I knew we had to do something because she was continually on the go."

They tried athletics first. Derek took seven-year-old Lauren to a local club in Bargoed, but they were told she was too young.

So the former football coach ed an old friend, who was setting up a football club in nearby Fleur-de-Lys. Price became their first, and only, girl member.

She loved the physical side of sport and it was not long before she took up kickboxing too. Rob Taylor had a club called Devils Martial Arts - the club that also shaped the early years of Great Britain taekwondo star Lauren Williams, who took silver in Tokyo - and coached groups of children in the local leisure centre.

"I'll always her coming through the door," Rob smiles. "Little girl, bright blonde hair.

"She just had such an appetite for working. She always wanted to hit the pads.

"She was training seven, eight, nine, 10 hours a week. Three, four nights a week. Her gran and granddad would bring her along. She's back again, back again.

"We'd tried a competition and she'd do well in that. Then we'd move on and on.

"Her appetite and work-rate was insatiable. It was just infectious."

By the time Lauren was 13, she was fighting adults - and beating them.

She won four senior world kickboxing titles, as well as a host of European golds.

At every training session and competition, at home or abroad, her grandparents would be there.

"If it wasn't for my nan and granddad ing me, I wouldn't have achieved anything," Price has said.

"They paid thousands for me to travel abroad and for me to compete, training every night, driving around the country."

Linda says there was never a question. Welcoming the young Price into their home had given her and Derek a new lease of life.

Nearly every day of the week they would take her to training - kickboxing on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Football training twice a week, then a match on Saturday and another on Sunday.

"I just knew she was going to succeed," Linda says. "She was one of these kids who got it into her head she was going to achieve and she just did.

"With her kickboxing, sometimes she'd train four hours a night. That's an awful lot of hours to be training when you're only nine or 10.

"She never once said, 'I don't want to go to training tonight'. Whether it was football or kickboxing. Never once. You just knew she was going to do something good."

Even as the kickboxing titles racked up, Price continued to play football.

After the age of 14, girls were no longer allowed to play in boys' teams. So she moved to Georgetown Girls in Merthyr Tydfil - before Cardiff City Women came calling.

"I don't think I'll ever coach another player as good as Lauren, with her ability but also her discipline," former coach Lesley-Ann Judd says.

"That's what I liked about Lauren. Her discipline to always improve.

"In training she'd be there early. Sometimes before I'd even set the cones up. And she'd be there right until the end.

"If she needed to work on something, she'd work on it. She listened and everything was just perfected."

Price's nan always encouraged her.

When she wrote out those three goals at school, Linda warned her teacher not to shatter her dreams.

"I've always said 'reach for the moon and if you fall short, you'll land on the stars'," she says.

"Something will come. Just be determined and persevere. Always believe in yourself."

Price's footballing ability soon turned heads. She represented Wales at under-16, under-17, under-19 and senior level - all before her 17th birthday.

She went on to play for her country 52 times across all age groups and captained Wales Under-19s, winning two senior caps in 2012-13.

Those kickboxing world titles and international football caps meant that two of the three goals that eight-year-old Lauren had written out had been achieved.

But the challenge to become an Olympian remained.

"I'd always watched the Olympics from a young age," Price said. "I seeing Kelly Holmes [at Athens 2004] and people like that.

"It's the biggest sporting event ever. It just gave me goosebumps. I just wanted to compete in it one day. I didn't know in one sport or how."

Her kickboxing and football careers continued, but Price had also gone for a trial at GB Taekwondo - and been successful.

She left home at 16 and moved to Manchester. She lived with future double Olympic champion Jade Jones, who had also recently ed the programme.

The London Olympics were round the corner but the sport was not quite right for Price.

"It didn't really fit with me," she itted. "It was hard being away from home at that age.

"In kickboxing I was always better with my hands than my legs. So I decided to come back and went to a boxing gym."

It proved to be a life-changing decision.

This was not Price's first time in a boxing gym. She had done a bit to improve her upper-body strength as she thought it would help her improve as a defender in football.

But it was the first time she started to take it seriously.

As ever, her granddad would willingly take her to train.

Unsurprisingly, her kickboxing background and physical fitness meant she hit the ground running.

It was not long before she was sent to the Wales boxing squad for an assessment.

She impressed and at 17 years old was selected for the Youth World Championships.

Price reached the final and looked on course to win, only for the fight to be stopped because she got a nosebleed. She still seems aggrieved to this day.

She continued to box for Wales and play football for her country.

In football, she captained Wales Under-19s at a home European Championship.

In boxing, she was given an opportunity that would change the course of her sporting career for good.

Women's boxing had just been added to the Commonwealth Games programme. In 2014 she was given the chance to box for Team Wales.

The time had come to throw her weight behind one sport and having watched Nicola Adams and Katie Taylor win gold at London 2012, Price had the Olympic Games in her sights once again.

She went to the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games and won bronze in the women's middleweight competition. Even now, she believes she was unlucky in the semi-final.

Price continued to train and continued to compete, but the Welsh programme was not full-time.

So she became a taxi driver at the weekend, delivering engers back home through the night. It all helped make ends meet.

Then, after the 2016 Olympics, she got a chance to trial for the British programme in Sheffield - which had brought back eight Olympic medals at the last two Games alone.

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