Early Life
Smith was born in Eye, Cambridgeshire to his English mother, Elaine who separated from his Jamaican-born father, Claude when he was young. He was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and put on Ritalin when he was seven years old. His mother commented that it was a case of his "running around the house and climbing everywhere or going somewhere more structured." His local friends included Aston Merrygold, later a member of boyband JLS.
When he was seven, Smith was offered a choral scholarship, but instead chose to focus on gymnastics. He first learned to use the pommel by putting his feet in a bucket that was tied to a rope and hung from a ceiling. He attended Arthur Mellows Village College in Glinton, Cambridgeshire.
Read more about this topic: Louis Smith (gymnast)
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Franklin said once in one of his inspired flights of malignity—
Early to bed and early to rise
Make a man healthy and wealth and wise.
As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on such terms.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life ... for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,—some of its virus mingled with my blood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)