Why is laura trott bald

Indeed she says her hair loss has helped drive her on to greatness. And her win in the women's cycling team pursuit at the velodrome on Saturday could not have come at a better time - it fell on International Alopecia Day which seeks to raise awareness of the condition. She said a fan had contacted her on Twitter to tell her about the special day.

She said: "I thought 'wow, that's a bit spooky that our Olympic final is the same day'. When I was younger I used to focus really hard on my school work. I didn't have much confidence in my appearance and I became very, very focused on my studies.

At the world championships in Manchester which is also her training base , she won a gold medal in the women's team pursuit alongside Rebecca Romero and Wendy Houvenaghel. She's repeated the feat three times since, most recently at this year's world championships in Colombia in February. What an amazing week! Thank you so much for all the messages! Rowsell will be going for more individual pursuit glory at the Commonwealth Games in Scotland later this month.

She will be the hot favorite when she lines up at Glasgow's Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome -- named after the six-time Olympic champion cyclist and the man who helped foster Rowsell's interest in the sport when she watched him race on TV at the Athens Games. Now it is the year-old Rowsell who is inspiring the next generation with her feats of bravery on and off the track.

But the biggest reward, perhaps, is the gift that cycling has given back to her. I am thinking about winning the Olympics or winning the Commonwealth Games or the World Championships.

For more information on alopecia areata, click here an d here. Print Email More sharing Reddit. Joanna Rowsell: In pursuit of glory. Human to Hero. Acrobatic artistry of Wushu champion. The martial art of Wushu combines speed, grace and skill and Vietnamese Duong Thuy Vi is one of the world's best.

Vietnam's Wushu martial artist. Duong Thuy Vi is a rising star in Wushu -- a martial art that requires grace, strength and incredible flexibility.

Sharpshooter blows away opposition. Seema Tomar has stared down the barrel of poverty and prejudice to become one of the world's leading trap shooters. I threw myself into my studies. My teachers used to tell me I would burn out as I worked so hard. But, to me, working hard stopped me worrying about the future. Then there was the cycling: at 15, Joanna was scouted by the British Cycling talent team when they visited her school in Sutton, Surrey. At the time she had little interest in cycling but, after clocking her incredibly fast time in a school trial, the scouts felt she had raw talent and she started to train.

Then, at the age of 16, the thing she had longed for happened: her hair started to grow back. Within a few months it fell to below her ears. But it changed everything. It was so nice to leave the house and feel normal. My heart would sink when I saw another clump coming out.

She went through that process again three years ago, when her hair again grew back in patches, although this time only for a month.

After the previous cycle of hope followed by disappointment, it must have been another crushing blow. Maybe doing it would mean properly confronting the fact that I had lost my hair. There is still part of me that is in the process of accepting it. This time, though, she was determined. She enlisted the help of a friend, and together they went to Selfridges in London for a wig trying-on session. That, suddenly, I could be in control and I could have hair whenever I wanted, look however I wanted.

She emerged from the shop with two wigs: one dark brown and straight with a fringe for daytime, and a dark curly one for evenings. It felt like a new me. I remember trying on all these different clothes and just really enjoying it. But she concedes it was very hard when her hair first started to fall out, back when she was Really, the brave thing was learning to deal with it when I was young — going to my first training camp when nobody knew me or about my condition.

That was brave. Alopecia is a general term used for hair loss; this can be anything from a small bald patch on the head to the loss of all the hair over the entire body. According to Alopecia UK , it affects approximately 1.

The exact cause is still not known, but it is generally agreed that it is a disease of the immune system, which attacks affected hair follicles by mistake. It doesn't affect the sufferer's physical health, though it can certainly cause psychological scars. Rowsell has lost almost all her hair, hence not having to shave her legs and having to pencil in her eyebrows each morning. By the time she won gold in London aged 23, she had stopped obsessing over it and was surprised by the reaction her bald head caused.

But she doesn't like people treating her wigs as fashion accessories: she remains unhappy about a photoshoot with a national newspaper post-Games, which got her to wear six different wigs with six different outfits. Despite being softly spoken and certainly more of an introvert than Trott and some of her other team-mates, there is a steeliness to Rowsell.