Badminton: Lauren Smith flew Cumbria's flag at the very top

There would be another international badminton competition, a country's Open, a Commonwealth Games or even an Olympics, and Lauren Smith would be there. Like night following day.

And this is perhaps the best tribute of all (not that it should mask the years of bloody-minded effort to get there). When excellence is the standard, something we read about so often it ceases to surprise, then that is the sign an athlete has climbed most of the peaks in front of them.

And suddenly, the journey is over. Smith, on Sunday, announced the joyful news that she is pregnant. She will no longer compete for England, or Great Britain, on international stages again. At 33, one of Cumbria’s very finest sporting ambassadors of recent times now moves into the next stage of life.

We wish her, and partner Marcus Ellis, every happiness. And we must also pause to pay tribute to what she has done for so many years.

Smith, left, won a host of medals during her career, including seven at three Commonwealth Games (Image: Danny Lawson / PA)

One does not need an intricate knowledge of the sport of badminton to appreciate how difficult it is to go as high as Smith did, from Cumbrian junior circles to the European elite, to the world stages where the very best compete.

To be good enough to play in two Olympic Games, reaching the quarter-finals in one of them, is considerable in itself. To be of the quality to win seven medals at the Commonwealths, likewise. These events bring competitors from all corners, all flags; each with their aspirations, their dreams, their skill-sets, their fierce ambitions.

With this the picture, how satisfying was it, for so long, to see someone from around here – Smith was born in Carlisle and grew up in Longtown – representing not just herself but flying Cumbria's banner at the highest levels of it all, and very often winning?

This is the case with all our high-reaching individuals. Think Helen Housby in netball, Ben Stokes in cricket, scores more. Smith, in women’s doubles and mixed doubles, was on the Commonwealth podium in Glasgow, Australia’s Gold Coast and Birmingham. In various European Championships she took medals in Kolding, Huelva and Kyiv, Leuven, Moscow, Lubin and Aire-sur-la-Lys. As a junior she did so in Milan. In the European Games, she won gold in Minsk, silver in Minsk, bronze in Krakow.

Lauren Smith, pictured with mum Nicola, was a junior badminton star in Cumbria before reaching the top of the sport (Image: News & Star)

There were, along the way, many more regional titles, national titles, golds in Opens across the globe: in Canada, the Netherlands, Thailand, Scotland. Listing all Smith’s accolades and medals would require quite some stamina. To repeat: this was one of ours, taking on the world, often winning.

Inspiring, truly, and deserving of all the local acclaim she has received...and probably more. Badminton rarely makes the back pages, seldom leads the bulletins, not often garners the publicity available more cheaply to others, whether in or outside of sport.

Yet when it does materialise higher on the agenda, at the Olympics or Commonwealths, it draws more eyes to it, temporarily, as the rapid, engrossing sport it is, the game that was in Smith’s family long before she picked up a racket – mum Nicola was and is a top county player – and which, through her own determination (“Cumbrian grit”, she often called it), offered Smith a pathway to the top.

And if there have been obstacles and harder times along the way too, well, that is the case of any sporting career, and the pain of defeats and injuries have also been withstood at the peaks of the sport. Off the court, Smith also had the moral courage, in 2021, to speak out about perceived cultural issues inside Badminton England, and was vindicated in a report that followed.

Smith, from Longtown, will still have plenty to offer badminton in the future (Image: News & Star)

She always, too, appreciated her status both in badminton and as a Cumbrian ambassador – seldom saying no to an interview request, always finding ways to make time, never being aloof from the place she came from, the higher she rose. Her Instagram feed, meanwhile, is the sight of a sports woman embracing social media and being accessible in a modern way, something which in its own manner may help her carve whatever future around the sport, or beyond, lies ahead.

For now, though, it will be the countdown to motherhood, a pausing of the competitive life and a full stop applied to it internationally. So at this moment let us say this: for all the years that her skill and her will put Cumbria on the biggest stage, this sporting county owes Smith a debt of thanks.