Imani-Lara Lansiquot

Imani-Lara Lansiquot spent her downtime at her first Olympics writing a play about Peckham.

It’s impossible to miss Lansiquot’s deep-rooted and proud connections to her home borough.

Before Rye Lane made Peckham the place for a rom-com, Lansiquot was putting it on the map and the 26-year-old lived there until the age of 10 when she moved to Croydon.

She looks back on her childhood fondly even if she now recognises the difficulties that come with living in the area - Peckham has worked hard to improve its reputation for being a home for gang violence,

“I feel like coming from there you do have to have a certain level of protection, mentally, and to be strong and ready for anything,” she said.

“When I was younger, I didn’t really see it as a tough place to grow up, it was just home to me. 

“But when you’re from a place like Peckham, people don’t expect you to be anything other than what a stereotypical person from Peckham is. 

“I guess, having to overcome barriers and stereotypes makes you very hardened, very strong.”

Lansiquot’s sporting ability may have felt destined given she was partly named after the cricketer Brian Lara.

Her father, Richard is responsible for her name, and can also pinpoint the moment where everything changed – the moment where she went from being good at athletics to being a potential star.

Richard remembers: “Imani-Lara used to win her primary school sports days. But the pivotal moment was in Year 7 sports day when she won not just her year group, but beat every other year group in her school in the 100m.

"The school decided the winners of Year 7, 8, 9 and 10 of the 100m would race against each other. This is something they'd never done before but she won that as a Year 7.

"At that point I felt the talent was enough to start pushing her more so we sent her to get coached."

While Lansiquot is undoubtedly one of Peckham’s best sporting outputs, she faces a battle to be South London’s premier sprinter. Ever since she came into the sport, she has been following in the footsteps of Orpington’s Dina Asher-Smith, the fastest British woman in history.

The two first met in 2014 on the other side of the world, having both been selected for the World Junior Championships in Oregon. Lansiquot, who is two years younger than Asher-Smith, cheered her compatriot on as she won the 100m title, citing that as motivation for her.

Despite the comparisons, Lansiquot is keen to forge her own path.

“I do really appreciate it because she is an incredible athlete, but I want to have my own journey and story,” she said.

“I’m sure our journeys will be very different in sport as we get older.

“I’m focused on what I’m doing and we’ll see how it goes. It is an honour though.”

The pair’s journeys are still quite intertwined for now, they have shared the podium at European, Commonwealth, World and Olympic level.

A breakthrough for Lansiquot’s career came in 2020 as she won her first ever national medal, and a gold at that.

That marked Lansiquot’s first and so far, only individual title, with her international success coming in the relays.

But there are signs that she is still building, she became only the third British woman to rub sub-11 seconds in September of last year with a time of 10.99.

It reinforced her ability to bounce back, having been disqualified from the 100m at the World Championships in Budapest just a couple of weeks earlier.

That ability to move on quickly was perhaps honed at Tokyo 2020, Lansiquot’s debut Games.

Having arrived in Japan under strict protocols, the sprinter was one of a number of athletes forced to isolate for 20 hours a day having shared a flight with someone who returned a positive Covid test.

Searching for silver linings, Lansiquot found it with more than enough time to write the play about Peckham she had been commissioned to right.

From it, Armour of Gaza was born, and it was performed as part of a series just a few months after she returned from Tokyo with a bronze medal.

“I didn’t tell anyone that I was writing it,” she said. “I was really nervous it wasn’t going to be good and even though I really enjoyed it, you’re always apprehensive about people seeing you in a new light. 

“Obviously, I’m the athlete and to be the writer I was so nervous. I read it to my boyfriend and when he said it was really good I was like ‘ok, now I’ll tell everyone’.

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