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:
“Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. So simple. You’ve got to catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rain spout in front of her house. The ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethoven’s “Pastoral.” A letter scribbled on her office stationery that you carry around in your pocket because it smells of all the lilacs in Ohio.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Our life runs down in sending up the clock.
The brook runs down in sending up our life.
The sun runs down in sending up the brook.
And there is something sending up the sun.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)