Lauren Price says she is ready to relaunch her campaign for a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics next year after spending the entire UK lockdown isolated from her family.
Price, the middleweight who won gold at the World Championships in 2019, is one of 12 Great Britain boxers who will return to training at the GB Boxing headquarters in in Sheffield when it partially reopens next week.
But the 25-year-old spent the lockdown period sharing a house with team-mate Karriss Artingstall in Sheffield, 170 miles from her home in South Wales, without being able to get in the gym, because members of her family had underlying health conditions and she did not want put them at risk.
“I am looking forward to going into camp and getting back into a routine of training three times a day,” Price said. “We are going to have to work around the social distancing guidelines so we will not be able to go flat-out but it will be good to get back into the gym environment and have the coaches there to work with us and get that face-to-face input from them.
“The GB Boxing coaches and staff have been in touch with us throughout lockdown and have prepared us for the fact that returning to the gym will not be the same as usual. They have put loads of work into this and I do not have any concerns about going back.”
Price had been No 1 seed at the European Olympic qualifying event in London in March and had been due to box the day after the event was suspended due to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of many boxers eager to compete but left frustrated. No new date has been announced for the tournament’s restart.
“I had been in a great run of form and was going into the qualifier in excellent shape,” she said. “I had been through a really good training camp prior to the event and felt I was mentally and physically well prepared so I was absolutely gutted when I found out the qualifier was being suspended before I had chance to box.
“I was disappointed, but once the seriousness of the situation became clear I realised that the event could not have gone on.”
It was not long before it was announced that the Tokyo Olympics were being pushed back to 2021 and while Price does have ambitions to turn professional, there was never much thought she would leave the squad to turn over.
“Then when it was announced that the Olympics was postponed so my attitude was to try and see the positives in the situation,” she said. “It gives me more time to prepare and means I have another year working with the coaches to develop and improve.”
“This has been my mindset during the lockdown and I have been using the time to work on a few things I might not normally get to try as ordinarily I would be preparing for a competition.
“I have also enjoyed having the opportunity to mix-up my training and doing things like going out for a bike ride in the fresh air, rather than just running on the track in the gym, has been good. It’s fortunate that I have been able to share a house with one of my squad mates, so we have been able to keep each other motivated and train together which has been a big help.”
Ron Lewis is a senior writer for Boxing Scene. He was Boxing Correspondent for The Times, where he worked from 2001-2019 - covering four Olympic Games and numerous world title fights across the globe. He has written about boxing for a wide variety of publications worldwide since the 1980s.
