Lauren Booth leaves them trailing at nationals

Chippenham’s Booth, who is just 15, was in red-hot form at the Manchester Velodrome and even left Paralympic Games medallists in her wake as she won both the C1-5 time trial and flying 200m events.

In the time trial, Booth, who clocked a factored time of one minute 5.4 seconds, held off the challenge of four-time Paralympic gold medal-winner Jody Cundy (1:06.2), who has also claimed three golds in swimming.

Then Booth was the first rider on the track for the flying 200m event and completed the 3km distance in 4:27.644, with her final factored time totalling 11.545, which wasn’t beaten as the Wiltshire teenager claimed her second gold medal of the championships.

Booth could only manage an eighth-placed finish in the mixed individual pursuit (4:27.6) but she did also help herself to youth records in all three of the events she competed in, as well as a women’s record in the flying 200m, putting the cherry on the top of a sensational three days of competition. And it all happened with Abbeyfield School pupil Booth feeling far from her best.

“When I got out of bed, I said to my mum that I didn’t feel well and I had a cold but she said that I should do the time trial,” she said.

“I heard that I was going to be against Jody Cundy, so I wasn’t expecting to win the 500m (time trial).

“I’d watched him doing standing starts on YouTube and I couldn’t believe it when I won – when I won, I burst into tears.

“When we got back to the hotel, I still felt really bad and I thought I’d just give the flying 200m a go.”

Booth, is part of the Great Britain Cycling Team Para-cycling Programme for 2017 and is being groomed towards competing at the 2020 games in Tokyo.

The teenager, who contracted bacterial meningitis as a baby and now has hearing loss in one ear and cerebral palsy, represents Wales and trains at the Newport Velodrome.