Name: Laura Trott
Event: Track cycling: women’s team pursuit and omnium
Date of Birth: 24th April 1992, Age 20
Career Highlight: Winning the women’s omnium at the 2012 World Championships
Did you Know? Laura was born with a collapsed lung and spent the first six and half weeks of her life in intensive care on a ventilator.
In recent times, track cycling has been Team GB’s principal Olympic success story. At Beijing, we attained twelve of our forty-seven medals from the sport’s various disciplines including seven of our nineteen golds. Latest in a long line of recent British cycling successes is Laura Trott. Being a current double world and European champion in the team pursuit and gaining victory in this year’s women’s omnium event at the World Championships, she has a serious chance of bagging two gold medals in London.
Born in Harlow, Essex, being raised in Hertfordshire and living in Manchester, Trott entered the sport somewhat begrudgingly, her mother dragging the whole family to the outdoor track at Welwyn every Saturday morning after being advised it would be a good way for her to lose weight. Yet, when Trott started winning, she started to enjoy the visits (especially as she was awarded two pounds for each victory). Aged twelve, she became National Junior Champion and has since successfully converted junior success into victories on the world stage.
Having won the women’s team pursuit at the world championships held earlier this year in world record time, Trott and her team-mates Danielle King and Joanna Rowsell are hot favourites to add the Olympic title to this triumph. However, the Australian team appear a serious threat as they finished barely a second behind their Anglophone counterparts in the final. Trott has also identified Canada, U.S.A and New Zealand as potential threats.
Trott is also the hot favourite to be victorious in the Women’s omnium (a kind of heptahlon for cyclists but with six events) after she won gold at the same World Championships. However, she will encounter severe resistance from American Sarah Hammer, who won silver and bronze medals in the 2011 and 2012 World Championships respectively, and Canadian Tara Whitten who won gold in the 2010 and 2011 events. After coming 2nd in the 2012 World Championships, Australian Annette Edmondson could also be a force in London.