New: Laura Gallagher

Welcome to Laura Gallagher’s new blog at thetalkofsport.com. 21-year-old Laura is a trampolinist from Great Britain. Having returned from an injury that kept her sidelined for more than five months at the start of 2010, she’s now building towards competing at the Olympics in London.

I had just left college with a good set of A Level results and decided to take a year out to concentrate on training. Weeks later the hard work paid off as I won the Under-19 World Champs.

It was a great feeling at the time, but just weeks after this I suffered a huge loss in confidence. I would travel the hour and a half round trip to training six times a week but sometimes be too scared to get on the trampoline and soon after winning I found myself off the National Squad too.

I tried lots of different things to try and help, but nothing worked and 10 months later I hit rock bottom. I took a week off and came up with a new plan. I emailed my coach and came in the following week and, looking back, neither I nor my coach actually believed that we would ever achieve that plan; to get back into competing!

After hours of hard work not only did I get back into competition, but by the end of the season I had competed in my first senior World Cups and won the final trial for the World Championships where I competed in Russia last November. Everything was going great and all the hard work was showing! I was back on track and ready for the new season.

Fast forward to today, and I have just returned to full training after suffering a knee injury in February which put me out of action for 5 months. Everything was going so well at the time and I had just won the first European trial by some margin. But just a week later I had an accident in training which meant I had to miss the European Championships. I was gutted, but so determined to get through the rehab and come back stronger, both mentally and physically. I constantly pushed on and spent hours working on all the different programmes I was given. The support team around me was fantastic; I was very lucky to receive such support.

Just four weeks ago I was given the all clear to start back on the trampoline. It felt amazing to be back! However, it has not been an easy ride struggling with ankle ‘niggles’ and time constraints in training, whilst my knee and the rest of my body still had to adapt to the impact of the trampoline and the intensity of the training.

I also had to pull out of the Canada Cup; a competition I felt so chuffed to be invited to by the Canadians as one of eight women across the world. Despite all of these minor issues nothing will stop me from succeeding – it just makes me more determined!

Last week I competed at the Poland World Cup. Although I had accepted before I went out there that I wasn’t going to be on top form, I did struggle to deal with it during the competition and I guess I simply was not ready for that one. It was a great experience for me though to compete in a situation where I was totally out of my comfort zone.

Next week I look forward to competing at the British Championships with a bit more practice under my belt!

Laura Gallagher