Crystal's Profile

Crystal Lane-Wright was selected for the Tokyo Paralympics, five years after she came home from the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro with a silver from the velodrome and bronze medal on the road. Tokyo will mark Lane-Wright’s third Paralympic appearance, having made her debut in London 2012, and she is scheduled to ride the C4-5 road race, as well as the C5 time trial and individual pursuit on the track.

In those three events she will be competing with Great Britain team-mate Dame Sarah Storey, the woman who helped inspire her to take up the sport on a path that has led to a world title on the track as well as the Paralympic medals.

Lane-Wright (née Lane), who was born with an under-developed left hand, had played football to county standard as a youngster and was inspired to get involved in para sport by the Beijing 2008 Paralympics where she admired the exploits of Storey and the rest of the Great Britain team.

Storey had a similar disability to Lane-Wright who was spotted at a talent identification event, part of a drive to unearth new athletes for 2012. By December 2010, she was part of the Great Britain Cycling Team and on the road to success of her own.

Her first UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships were productive, as she picked up a bronze medal in the road race in Roskilde, Denmark in 2011, before she just missed out on a medal at her debut Paralympic Games in London, finishing fourth in the individual pursuit, sixth in the road race and ninth in the time trial.

This encouraged Lane-Wright to put added emphasis on her track ambitions, and after a fourth-place finish in the 500m at the 2014 UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships, she claimed her first global track medals in Apeldoorn, Netherlands in 2015 – silver in the 500m and bronze in the scratch race.

A further bronze medal – in the 500m – followed at the World Championships in 2016, and although Lane-Wright’s Paralympic selection was only confirmed when Russia’s expulsion gave Great Britain additional places, she more than showed her class in Rio, winning pursuit silver on the track and road race bronze.

She made a triumphant return to Rio two years later, claiming her first world title at the 2018 UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships.

Her form on the road also remained consistent – she picked up one silver and two bronze medals in the World Championships of 2017 and 2018, while she came close to adding to this tally in 2019, where she finished fourth in the time trial and was involved in a dramatic crash while in the hunt for the medals in the final stages of the road race.

She did claim a world medal on the track in 2019 – silver, behind team-mate Storey, in the scratch race in Apeldoorn, Netherlands.

Lane-Wright added to that tally in 2020, again claiming silver behind Storey in the scratch race, and finishing second in the individual pursuit before the Covid-19 pandemic limited the racing calendar. But the delayed Paralympic year of 2021 started in promising fashion at the UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships in Portugal where she took a silver in the individual time trial, behind Storey yet again, and finished fifth in the road race which was also won by her team-mate.

If you have been inspired to get on a bike...

Get Involved