(CNN) — When Lauren Price was eight years old, she set herself three goals: to become a world kickboxing champion, to play football for the Welsh national team, and to compete in… Olympic Games.
For most people, growth requires making choices, giving up multiple dreams to focus all their energy on just one dream, and hoping that one dream will come true, if they’re lucky.
But Lauren Price never had to make that decision. By the age of 12, she was already a kickboxing world champion, a title she won three more times.
Before turning 18, she played senior football for Wales twice at senior level and a further 50 times at under-16, under-17 and under-19 levels, where she captained her team. Football and kickboxing have been crossed off the list.
Then, seeing female boxers fight in the Olympic ring for the first time at London 2012 inspired another goal for Price, and soon after she took up the sport, leaving football to focus on it.
That was the sport that took her to the Olympics where she notably won a gold medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in the women’s middleweight category.
Lauren Price was also a talented soccer player. (Image source: Matt Lewis/FA Collection/Getty Images)
On Saturday, she completed another milestone when she became the first Welsh boxer to become world champion by defeating Jessica McCaskill by unanimous technical decision after the fight in Cardiff, Wales, was stopped early on medical advice to treat her injured and swollen eye.
“This is just the beginning,” Price, who is now the WBA, IBO and Ring Magazine welterweight champion, told Sky Sports. “I want to build a legacy and create greatness… You see what Katie Taylor has done for Ireland, I want to do the same for Wales.”
But, despite the perfect fulfillment of all his childhood dreams, Bryce had to fight hard to achieve them both in and out of the ring.
When he started boxing, Price combined training with his job as a teaching assistant, supporting a girl with special educational needs, and then worked as a taxi driver for his grandparents’ company, transporting people to and from Cardiff on Fridays and Saturdays.
Her grandparents, Linda and Derek, raised her from the time she was three days old.
They were the ones who introduced Price to the sport, initially as a way to release all her childhood energy, Linda told the National Lottery, which funds British athletes, in 2021.
Lauren Price won a gold medal at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. (Credit: Buda Mendes/Getty Images)
“They always supported me and told me to believe in my dreams. My grandmother used to say: ‘Reach for the moon, if you fail you will land on the stars,'” Price told Sky Sports.
“So far he’s given me a good luck card and I’ll read it before fight night, it’s the little things.”
Price’s grandfather, Derek, died in November 2020, before he could watch her become an Olympic champion and become the new “star” in boxing, said Ben Shalom, the boxing promoter, according to the BBC.
“I believe if you work hard enough and have dreams, you can achieve them,” Price told Sky Sports on Saturday ahead of his world title fight.
“I was once a girl and I had three goals… I was able to achieve all three with the love and support of my grandparents.”
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