The Special Winter Olympics Australian team has welcomed its newest representative Lane Cove local Lauren Kerjan.
The Games will be held in Turin, Italy from March 8 2025. There will be 37 Australian athletes with intellectual abilities making the trip.
The 31-year-old will compete in both the Giant Slalom and Alpine Skiing and is the only woman on the NSW team.
“I’m the only female in NSW going,” Lauren proudly told ITC while sitting next to her mother Marianne at their local cafe Fink.
“I think it’s a great opportunity to represent Australia in the world games because there’s not really many of us.”
“I’m very proud. She’s very, very good, very talented and very dedicated,” Marianne added.

Lauren’s pursuit of the Olympics was not born from a lifelong dream, but rather an in-the-face revelation that there was a competitive athletic market she had yet to tap.
“I was skiing one day with my friend, we saw the Special Olympics bibs, and were like, why aren’t I involved in the Special Olympics?” Lauren retold.
The athlete is unsurprisingly involved in other avenues of sporting communities, such as being a member of the Lane Cove Football Club and playing indoor soccer with the Special Olympics. This is where Lauren connected with the appropriate people to pursue her Winter Olympic goals.
From there, Lauren won the National Winter Games last July at Mt Buller in Victoria and qualified for the Games – an achievement which she says is one of her proudest, and there is a long list.

Aside from her escapades as an athlete, she has achieved much as an artist. The long-time painter is a part of Studio A, an organisation dedicated to helping artists with intellectual disabilities attain their creative and economic aspirations.
Lauren’s artworks have acclaimed national success, having works commissioned by Westpac and Liberty Speciality Markets and creating masterpieces exhibited in the Art Gallery of NSW.
“I’ve been painting since I was really little, but I joined Studio A in 2016,” Lauren said.
“Flowers I usually like to paint, I’m usually a botanical artist. Sometimes I do animal portraits, birds or turtles and a whole lot of things.”

Mixing her two passions together, Lauren says her biggest dreams would be to represent Australia in Soccer and paint portraits of players from the women’s national football team, the Matildas – since she is already playing indoor soccer with the Special Olympics and completed a portrait of Sam Kerr, it’s safe to say she’s well on her way.
Lauren has skied the majority of her life, visiting international slopes such as Switzerland, Canada and Japan, but this will be her first time in Italy.

Although she has only had the ability to complete some ‘core training’ in our down-under summer season and will only have a few days to train on the slopes before the competition, she says she is not feeling the nerves.
“I’m excited,” Lauren said.
“Yes, she’s very excited, every day she tells me how many days until we leave,” Marianne interjected.
“I’m just really happy that there’s so many opportunities out there. I mean, Lauren’s great, and that she takes every opportunity that comes her way. And that’s really her personality.”
“I’ll probably definitely go and go again, because I love being overseas… and be a role model to younger athletes,” Lauren concluded.
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