Pride Month: Lauren Rowles on identity, disability and self-acceptance
From feeling “very different” growing up to becoming a history-maker, Rowles shared her journey of self-acceptance and her role as an advocate for inclusion 26 Jun 2026
From a very young age, three-time Paralympic rowing champion Lauren Rowles says she felt “very different” from her peers. Rowles was not bothered when other girls at school were talking about boys – she was focused on beating them at football and running faster than them.
Looking back, Rowles recognises those moments as early signs of her identity. But at that time, she did not have the language or the visibility to understand herself.
As she grew older, she started to hide that part of who she was.
“I didn’t grow up around people from the LGBTQ+ community. I didn’t have that representation positively in my life. That was something that held me back from accepting and celebrating the difference of being queer,” the British athlete said in a recent interview.
Growing up in Bromsgrove, UK, Rowles always dreamed of becoming a professional athlete. At just eight years old, after watching the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, she wrote in her diary that she would one day compete on that stage herself.
Today, at 28, Rowles has achieved greatness both on and off the field of play. She is the only athlete to ever win three Paralympic golds in Para rowing and a leading voice for inclusion. She is also engaged to wheelchair basketball player Jude Hamer, and together they are raising their two-year-old son.
Celebrating difference
For Rowles, learning to embrace who she is did not happen overnight. It was not until she developed a spinal cord condition at 13 and became a wheelchair user that she began to realise that being different is also a strength.
“It shifted my life in, some may say a negative way, and obviously it’s a traumatic way, but it has been a huge positive shift in my life,” she said.
“Becoming disabled was the first stage in me accepting that it was not only OK to be different, but it was to be celebrated.”
By finding her community with other people with disabilities, she gained confidence and, eventually, the courage and strength to come out in her early 20s.
Discovering Para sport at London 2012 was also a turning point. While staying at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, she attended the Games, which was her first real experience of navigating the “real world” in a wheelchair.
“I was going through mental ill health because of having this disability and not knowing what the world looked like for me,” she recalled. “The Games transformed my life, and I was so inspired by the athletes. I felt I had energy and liveliness, and a goal just put back into me.
“I always remember pushing out of the park and saying to my mum that I wanted to go to the Paralympics. After that, that became my goal in life.”
Behind the success
After initially taking up wheelchair racing, Rowles started Para rowing in 2015 and quickly rose to stardom. She topped the podium in the mixed double sculls TAMix2x race with Laurence Whiteley a year later at Rio 2016.
Yet even as her sporting career flourished, she said her internal struggles remained.
“I felt as though I had anxiety because people were staring at me in my wheelchair. On top of that, I had this identity crisis of being queer and knowing that in my heart and in my soul, but never really bringing that to the forefront of conversation with myself.”
“I couldn’t come out and be myself and identify as being part of the LGBT+ community because that was another layer that I couldn’t quite accept yet. I felt as though I didn’t want to be part of another minority community and feel like I was even more different.”
It took years before she confronted those feelings. Ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, Rowles began working with a therapist and slowly started to open up.
“It took all those years to my early 20s to get to that point where I felt comfortable enough to tell somebody. When I came out, it was a huge relief of going, 'This is me' and telling the world that,” she said.
She felt positive immediately after coming out, which helped her deal with hateful comments online.
“I felt as though I had built the resilience because I had such amazing friends and family around me and teammates that supported me.”
Why representation matters
Seven years after coming out publicly, Rowles says she has found happiness – something she hadn’t imagined in her teenage years.
“I never thought that I would have a relationship with somebody that loved me and I would love them. I never thought I would have children,” she said. “It’s really sad.”
That is why being an active spokesperson for the LGBTQ+ community is so important for her.
“I started to realise that in being vocal about my identity and who I am, it provided a platform for other young women who have the same aspirations as me, who loved like me, and who looked like me,” she said. “I didn't have that representation growing up, so I wanted to be that representation going forward.
“I want another young person to look at me and go, 'she's a disabled and queer woman achieving greatness in sport.' I would love to be that role model for another kid to look at and go, 'I can do that because of her '.”
Dear eight-year-old Lauren
When asked to give a message to her younger self, Rowles does not try to rewrite any part of her story. Instead, she immediately thinks of the eight-year-old girl who loved sport.
“Be that girl. She was fearless. She was courageous. She was ambitious. She was the girl that told everybody she was going to the Olympics, and people laughed at her. But it was all of those things and that ambitious nature that I had that got me to the point that I am now.
“My only point of advice is: don’t start to hide away when you feel as though difference is the thing that sets you apart. It’s your difference that got you to become the most successful Paralympic rower of all time.”
Whenever Rowles takes on major challenges, she thinks of the eight-year-old Lauren. Two years after Paris 2024, she has retired from Para rowing and is embarking on a new challenge. She is competing in wheelchair racing, the sport she took up before Para rowing.
“One of the reasons why I left the sport was because I really hated being in a racing chair – it made me feel really disabled,” she said.
“I’m coming back around now to rewrite the arc because I want to heal that journey in that part of my life. I want to make sure that I come back to this sport as a very different person, as a confident woman that I am now with the acceptance that I have of my disability.
She wants to be the best she can be, and to perform at the top level, but most importantly, to have fun.
“Being in the chair now for me is freedom. And I very much celebrate that.”
