Exclusive interview: Olympic athlete and proud ‘Southwark girl’ Imani Lara-Lansiquot opens up about her Peckham upbringing

This summer, Imani-Lara Lansiquot crossed the finish line at the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham to bring home a Gold medal for Great Britain and "put Peckham on the map" once again.

Running the women's 4x100m relay at the European Athletics Championships, Imani-Lara anchored the team led by "Britain's fastest woman" Dina Asher-Smith and secured a Gold medal for the second time at the championships.

But away from the track, the Olympic athlete, who won Bronze at the Tokyo games in 2021 and Silver in Paris in 2024, confessed to being a "Southwark girl" through and through in an exclusive interview with the News .

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"I grew up around the back of the old Toys 'R' Us on the Old Kent Road", Imani-Lara said fondly. The former Toys 'R' Us, at the junction between Asylum Road and the Old Kent Road, was replaced by Lidl in February 2020.

"It was actually very close to the old school BMX Park, where Kye Whyte used to train," she added, noting "a lot was going on in that tiny, little radius". Olympic BMX racer Kye Whyte won Silver in Tokyo in 2021, having trained at Peckham BMX track in Burgess Park, which his dad Nigel co-founded in 2013.

Throughout her childhood, Imani-Lara never strayed too far from Southwark, attending St. Joseph's Catholic primary school in Camberwell before moving to Croydon as a teenager. Her father Richard is currently Headteacher at Sacred Heart, a Catholic secondary school, also located in Camberwell.

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Asked about her best memories of growing up in Peckham, Imani-Lara said: "Immediately, I'm thinking of going to the big library with my mum. I think of going to Peckham Plex and walking around the back of Peckham Plex - my grandma doesn't live so far from there."

The 28-year-old, who is half Nigerian, revealed she had particularly fond memories of going to the shops on Peckham High Road with her grandma. "She used to come over and we'd go to Bon Marche and the big Primark. I remember getting my hair done by the aunties and, because we used to have international days at school, getting my traditional wear tailored in the little shopping centre.

"I have so many memories of spending all of my free time, especially weekends, around there. I just think it was the best place possible for me to grow up."

Imani-Lara Lanisquot competing for Team GB on August 15 in Birmingham (credit: Sam Mellish / British Athletics)

Despite her career success, Imani-Lara said she never really dreamed of being a sports person as a child.

"That came later," she said. "But what I did want want - and I don't know if it came from being from Peckham - was I really, truly wanted to be great and I wanted to make it."

"I don't really know where that came from," she admitted. "It's not something I think you can be taught or something that's learned. It's just something I always had."

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She brought that mentality to her "first ever sports day", which took place in Myatt's Fields in Camberwell. "It would honestly feel like the Olympic final," she said, noting her family would approach her school's sporting events very seriously.

"Because I was an only child and my dad was a single dad, sport was a big deal for him and for us. But I didn't know that I was going to end up where I ended up.

"Doing that from a young age always made me think: 'I know I'm really good at this thing'. But I don't think I ever dared to dream how far it could take me. I just always knew that I wanted to try and be great."

Imani-Lara said she would have never dared to dream without her dad, a key figure throughout her early training days.

"When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a normal kid, hang out with my friends and cry about boys. That's what I truly wanted.

"And my dad really saw this talent in me from as little as five or six years old, and he would take me to training three times a week. He would pay for everything: all the trainers, spikes and equipment I needed.

Imani-Lara's relay team (credit: Sam Mellish / British Athletics)

"And I really did do it quite reluctantly, if I'm honest. It wasn't until 16 when I made my first British team, as the youngest person on that team, and we made it all the way to Oregon for the World Junior Championships... that I thought: 'no, I want to do this. This is something I really want to do.'"

Walking around Nike's World HQ in Oregon in the United States, past buildings dedicated to Michael Jordan and Serena Williams, Imani-Lara said she was "just so in awe of what was possible".

"From then on, I took myself to training. I paid for everything myself. I was really driven. And that, alongside the London 2012 Olympics, fed into this dream of wanting to be an Olympic champion.

"I've just been on those fumes ever since."

(credit: Sam Mellish / British Athletics)

In many ways, Imani-Lara grew up alongside Peckham, which she said had changed dramatically since her early childhood and had become "a little more gentrified". Despite moving further south in her teenage years, she enjoyed her "first nights out" in the area and quickly noticed it beginning to change.

"I'm 28 now, and I think these last 28 years - these last 30 years - in Peckham's history has been massive in terms of the changes to the cultural landscape.

"But I still remember what it was like."

Regardless of those changes, Imani-Lara said the local community in Peckham had always been "absolutely phenomenal" in supporting her.

"After Paris, the Prince of Peckham pub decided to have me as a local hero on a mural for them, which is literally a stone's throw away from where my grandma lives. I constantly go back to my dad's school. I love chatting to the kids. I love mentoring some of the girls there that want to get into sport.

"And I just feel like, every time I come home, it's very rare that I can walk down Peckham High Street without someone being like: 'oh my God, you're that girl! You're that runner!'"

Imani-Lara in front of her mural in Peckham (credit: ImaniLara / Instagram)

Imani-Lara said she was proud to have the whole community on her back. "Everywhere I go in the world - my sport takes me to so many amazing places - I want to be able to bring Peckham with me and put Peckham on the map."

She has not only done that by winning medals. In 2021, fresh from winning Bronze in the Tokyo Olympics, she wrote a play titled "Armour of Gaza" for a theatre festival in Peckham, staged by the female-led South East London-based Dropped Tea theatre company.

The play, which explored Imani-Lara's "identity, career and culture", was ultimately a celebration of her South London upbringing.

"I wanted to have a piece that really encapsulated what sport did for me as a young, black girl growing up in London," she said.

"I was often feeling like the odd one out. I didn't feel like the most popular girl at school. I always felt like there was something a bit different about me, and I really found my identity in sport. It completely transformed my confidence and my self-esteem."

She added: "I can't tell a story about my life without talking about where I'm from and how it shaped me as a person. I didn't really do it with the pressure of having Peckham on my back, but the fact it was performed in Peckham, and my friends and family were in the audience, meant it ended up being a lot more meaningful than I ever anticipated it would be."

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A proudly "high-achieving woman", Imani-Lara also has a degree in Psychology from King's College London, having been born in King's College Hospital in Denmark Hill and "spookily" wanting to study the subject "from a very young age".

Around the same time, in 2018, she won her first Gold medal at the European Athletics Championships in Berlin at the age of just 20. Surrounded by more experienced athletes, she said she joined the British women's relay team at a "very exciting" moment, at a time when they were "really laying their roots" in terms of their heritage and legacy.

Although the championships in Berlin marked her first competition with the team, she said winning a medal "was the expectation". "I was the newbie in the team and the girls really made me believe that it was possible. There was never a doubt in my mind that we weren't capable of that."

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"The girls definitely had that confidence and they gave it to me too. So, now I look back and I'm like, God, I was twenty years old and I just did it. I didn't even think about it."

Imani-Lara said her early career success was a testament to the "sisterhood" on the relay team, which has only grown stronger as the years have gone by. Now, as a senior member, she is relishing setting the standards "for the young ones coming in".

For Imani-Lara, the expectation for those "young ones" had to be winning Gold medals. Having won Bronze and then Silver in successive Olympics, she said: "There are no conversations that go by with us as a team when we don't talk about Gold in LA."

With the next Olympics held in Los Angeles, California in 2028, the Peckham local only has one goal on her mind. "You know, we're happy with our bronze. We're happy with our silver. But there's only so many times you do that before you get tired and you want the gold.

"So, that's our team mantra," she said. "That's what we want. We want to be the best in the world. And we know that we can be."

Imani-Lara competing during the Women’s 100m heats on August 10 (credit: Sam Mellish / British Athletics)

Asked if she had a message for young girls and boys growing up in Peckham and across the UK, Imani-Lara said: "The first thing I would say about sports, and athletics specifically, is do it. It is the most exciting time to join the sport."

"Every year, we're having new and exciting events," she added. "There are so many exciting initiatives happening and the sport is growing and growing and growing. This is the time to get involved, for sure."

Growing up in South London and training to become an athlete has taught Imani-Lara one thing above all. "There is so much power in patience," she said. "Sport can be the most humbling thing in the whole entire world. But it really teaches you the value of hard work and waiting your time, and that isn't something that I think is celebrated in today's society that much."

"Everything's about: 'what can you do in the quickest way possible? How can you get successful overnight?' And sport is one of the few things where you're actually unable really to do that.

"Even if someone looks like they've burst onto the scene, it's taken thousands and thousands of hours of hard work. So, I would really urge young people to see the power in that and to buy into that."