By Rob Cole
Lauren Price ensured she ended 2017 on a high as she won a split decision against English rival Stephanie Wroe to be crowned the British boxing champion at 69kg.
The British Olympic Podium squad member is hoping to punch her way to a better medal than the bronze she won in Glasgow in 2014 when she goes to the Gold Coast for next year’s Commonwealth Games.
“It was good to finish 2017 on a high by becoming GB Champion, even though it wasn’t my best performance. But I got the win in what has been a rollercoaster year – now I’m ready for a big 2018,” said Price.
The Tokyo Olympics in 2020 is the top target for the 23-year-old Newport-born fighter. She was a kick-boxing world champion at the age of 12 and then became a Welsh international footballer.
A talented defender at Cardiff City, from the age of 16 she juggled playing football for Wales and training to become a competitive boxer. In the end she opted to hang up her boots and concentrate all her energy on the ring.
“I had a decision to make between boxing and football. In the end I decided that starting out on a journey that could end in going to the Olympics was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I just had to take,” said Price.
Winning British titles is nothing new to the multi-talented Price. By the time she was 16 she had eight of them in kick-boxing to go along with six European and four World crowns. She then beat off the best efforts of more than 2,000 hopefuls to win a Taekwondo talent identification competition that saw her briefly join the British squad in Manchester and share a house with future double Olympic champion Jade Jones.
She returned to her hometown of Caerphilly to take up boxing full time and at 17, with just one amateur fight under her belt, she won bronze at both the Women’s European and Youth World Championships in 2011. She also took bronze at the 2016 European championships.
She struck bronze for Wales in the middleweight section at the Commonwealth Games three years ago and will be aiming for something better down under in a few months time. She was named as one of eight elite boxers in the Welsh Boxing Commonwealth Games squad last year.
Team Wales are due to confirm shortly how many of the eight – Lynsey Holdaway, Charlene Jones, Rosie Eccles and Lauren Price on the women’s side and Mickey McDonagh, Billy Edwards, Sion Yaxley and Kyran Jones on the men’s – will be included on the flight to Australia.
The only other Welsh fighter in action in Sheffield in the British finals was bantamweight Kyle Morrison. The Pembrokeshire ABC and Army fighter lost a unanimous verdict to England’s Louis Lynn.