AddThis SmartLayers

Olympic hero ‘delighted’ as weekly renames itself in her honour

A weekly newspaper changed its name to honour an Olympic star from its patch.

The Royal Sutton Coldfield Observer became the Royal Sutton Goldfield Observer for the day in tribute to Laura Unsworth, a member of Great Britain women’s hockey squad at the Rio Games.

Sports editor Matthew Panter interviewed Laura this week on her return from Rio, and the one-off name change coincided with a similar announcement from her former school, Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls, that it would be renaming it fitness suite ‘The Laura Unsworth Fitness Suite’.

The name change on Friday’s edition, pictured below, also featured a golden headline to match.

Sutton Goldfield

Laura was interviewed about her success on the Heart West Midlands radio station’s breakfast show on Friday morning, and the Observer’s deputy group editor Charlotte Hart called in to the studio to tell her about the newspaper’s name change live on air.

Charlotte said Laura had been “absolutely delighted” at the gesture.

She told HTFP: “We’ve been writing about Laura and her progress on the sports pages for some years now, so it was great to see her win gold in Rio

” She’s such an inspiration to the young people of Sutton Coldfield and we wanted to celebrate her achievement in the best way we could – by re-naming her local paper in her honour.”