Lauren Salisbury

My name is Lauren Salisbury. I am Great Britains only ever Olympic medallist in karate and I am part of the national and British teams.

I took up the sport at the age of 5 following my dad developing an interest in the sport. He took me along to classes to watch and after 2 lessons I insisted in joining in. Soon it became a family affair with my older sister starting 6 months later and my younger sister joining in as soon as she was old enough.

I competed at my first competition at the age of 6, where I competed in both fighting and kata (the two disciplines in karate) and managed to win a bronze medal, my first ever. Since that day I fell in love with the competing and started to compete in more and more local competitions and started to win more and more medals. At the same time I was also focusing on grading through my belts and at the age of 11 I managed to reach my blackbelt.

At this age I decided I wanted to take my karate more seriously as the talk began of karate eventually becoming an Olympic sport so I had to make the decision to leaving my existing association and join the English Karate Federation (EKF) who are part of the WKF who hold the olympic mandate. This is where my training became more intense and I started training every night along side school work. At the age of 12 I competed in my first National championships in which I won gold. I have successively held the national title for the past 4 years, alongside holding the British title for the same period of time. These were just the beginning of many titles I began to accumulate.

ENGLAND KARATE TEAM

After a successful 2016 I secured my first England cap at the Junior European Championships where I have held my spot ever since progressing through the categories. My results :
Bulgaria-Junior Europeans 2017- 7th place 
Tenerife-Junior Worlds 2017-9th place
Russia-Junior Europeans 2018
Denmark-Junior Europeans 2019

THE OLYMPIC DREAM 2018

As of January 2018 the dream became a possibility as karate was announced as a sport in the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires 2018. When the initial standings were released I was 10th in the standings. After fighting in prestigious competitions throughout the year I managed to move up to 6th and secured myself a spot representing Great Britain at the Olympic Qualification event where there was 4 places available across 2 days of competition (1st and 2nd each day). After a disappointing first day I reconfigured and came back fighting the second, after 5 hard fights I secured myself a spot at the Youth Olympics and became one of karate's first ever Olympians. On the 2nd of October 2018 I flew out to Buenos Aires as part of TEAM GB where on the last dat of competition battled though to secure Team GB's first ever Olympic medal (YOUTH OLYMPIC BRONZE).

Karate is a self funded sport meaning I solely rely on funding from my parents to pay for my trips. As I enter my senior career I will need to be competing at world ranking events twice a month all over the world which I will only be able to achieve with the help of some sponsorship and some kind funding to help achieve my dream of reaching Paris 2024.