Lauren Steadman MBE

A Peterborough beginning

Steadman was born in Peterborough and spent part of her childhood and education in the surrounding area, including Great Gidding and Sawtry.

Swimming quickly developed from something she enjoyed into a serious competitive pursuit.

By her mid-teens she was already an international athlete, competing in the S9 swimming classification for Great Britain.

Her selection for Beijing in 2008 meant that, at an age when most teenagers were still discovering what they wanted to do, Steadman was representing her country on the Paralympic stage.

The swimmer

Three Paralympic medals. Three different stories.

Tokyo: the race that completed the collection

The Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games were staged in 2021 after the global pandemic delayed the competition by a year.

Steadman arrived as one of the favourites in the women’s PTS5 triathlon and faced familiar opposition from Grace Norman.

During the cycling leg Lauren moved into the lead and then extended her advantage on the run.

She crossed the line more than forty seconds ahead of Norman to become Paralympic champion.

After competing at Paralympic level since the age of 15, Tokyo delivered the medal she had spent much of her sporting life chasing.

A career measured in more than Paralympic medals

Steadman’s success extends far beyond the Games.

She has won multiple World and European paratriathlon titles and established herself over many seasons as one of Britain’s leading athletes in the sport.

That consistency is important. Paralympic races provide the biggest stages, but the world and European circuits require athletes to perform repeatedly against the same elite international opposition.

The athlete who went dancing

In 2018, millions of people who had never watched a para triathlon discovered Lauren Steadman for a completely different reason.

She joined the cast of BBC One’s Strictly Come Dancing and was partnered with professional dancer AJ Pritchard.

Steadman reached the semi-final, displaying the same willingness to learn, practise and adapt that characterised her sporting career.

Her appearance also gave disability representation a prominent place on one of British television’s biggest entertainment programmes.

Sport and study

Steadman has pursued academic achievement alongside elite sport.

She graduated with a first-class degree in Psychology and later completed a master’s degree in Business and Management with distinction at the University of Portsmouth.

Her academic interests have also extended into mental wellbeing and the pressures faced by elite athletes.

That combination of sport and education has become another important part of her work with young people, encouraging them to challenge themselves academically as well as physically.

Changing how disability is seen

Steadman has spoken openly about disability and the importance of confidence, opportunity and challenging assumptions.

Her profile across both sport and television has allowed those messages to reach audiences far beyond para sport.

She also works with schools and young people, including children with disabilities, encouraging them to set ambitious goals rather than allowing other people’s expectations to determine what is possible.

The message is particularly powerful because it comes from somebody whose own life has repeatedly involved moving into unfamiliar territory: from swimming to triathlon, from elite sport to television, and from competition into academic research and public speaking.

Peterborough’s Paralympic champion

For Peterborough, Lauren Steadman belongs to a very small group of local sporting figures who have reached the absolute summit of international competition.

ParalympicsGB identifies her sporting region as Peterborough, while her story begins here long before the world titles, television appearances and medals arrived.

Her career adds something particularly valuable to Peterborough’s sporting story. It is not only about winning. It is about reinvention.

A teenage swimmer became a triathlete. A silver medallist returned for gold. An elite athlete stepped onto a dance floor. A Paralympic champion returned for a fifth Games and reached the podium again.

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