Hucknall pupils all love Sugar as Paralympic gold medalist pays a visit

Laura, who won gold in the KL3 canoe sprint at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics last month, spent the day at the school doing training sessions with key stage two pupils and also spoke at the whole school during assembly.

Karen Goldson, deputy head at the school, said: “It was absolutely brilliant.

"Tom Konseck, one of our teachers, is really good at looking for community involvement and ways to inspire our children and he found a company called The Mint Ridge Foundation who would be able to send in a Paralympian to work with our children.

“When we found out we’d got Laura Sugar, we were amazed, it was just superb.

"Not only was it a female athlete but one with a disability and we just thought she would be so inspiring in showing our children that they can overcome barriers and do whatever they want to do.”

Although principally working with key stage two pupils, the whole school was also able to hear from Laura at the assembly where she told them that she’d never said no to any sport and even when she’d found things difficult, she’d kept going.

Karen continued: “It really inspired our children to think about taking a few more chances in life and they were absolutely buzzing when came out of the assembly.

"From that, our key stage two pupils were so geared up to work with her and they had a mini Olympic training session and question and and answer sessions and the children’s questions were so insightful and really clever, wanting to know more about Laura and her training and what she overcame to win a gold medal in Tokyo.

"The kids loved it, I’ve never seen them so engaged.

"One girl raced up to her mum at home time and just said ‘mum, I’ve had the best day ever, I met an Olympic athlete with a gold medal’.

"Laura loved it too, I got an email from the Mint Ridge Company that evening saying how much she’d enjoyed working with the children."

The school is now looking into more events like this so key stage one children can also be involved.

Karen said: “We are definitely open to having more visits like this in the future.”