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:
“I don’t believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)