'I'm proud I landed my dream job'

Jodie Ounsley, aka Gladiator Fury, wasn't going to let having profound hearing loss hold her back

- LIZZIE CATT

Watching Jodie Ounsley squaring up to competitors as Fury on Gladiators, it's hard to believe she's ever been anything but strong and confident.

And at the age of 24, Jodie already has a remarkable rugby career under her belt. The first deaf female rugby player to have appeared for a senior England side, she represented England and Great Britain at rugby sevens.

She has won Deaf Sports Personality of the Year, served as honorary president of UK Deaf Sport, and visits schools talking to children about her story.

But behind the scenes, Jodie, from Thornhill, West Yorkshire, has overcome shyness and self-doubt, almost walking away from the game when difficulties with communication became too much.

She's now sharing the lessons she's learned in a new children's book, Keep Smashing It.

Born seven weeks premature and diagnosed with profound hearing loss, Jodie's parents Phil, 55, and Jo, 53, were told their daughter probably wouldn't speak, and would find it hard to get an education or a job when she grew up.

It was her parents' quick action, Jodie says, that set her on the path to success.

"They didn't know any deaf people at the time. They went into this mindset of, 'well, what can we do?"

Phil and Jo took Jodie to sessions at the Elizabeth Foundation, an organisation supporting deaf children, when she was three months, focusing on body language, eye contact and the start of lip-reading.

At 14 months, she was one of the youngest people in the UK to get a cochlear implant, a device which uses a sound processor to send signals to the ear that the brain can interpret as sound.

"It's not a quick fix," says Jodie. "It's a lot of work. My mum gave up her job and spent all day taking me to speech therapy then back home for practice, having that constant time with me."