It is always good to report on follow up successes of sportsmen and women we feature in the Star.

Last autumn we carried a feature on teenage Muay Thai boxer Leonie Hardman who asked for support – under the Talent Backer scheme – in order to visit the sport’s spiritual home of Thailand and propel her sporting career further.

The Grange Park girl hit her target which meant Talent backer paid £500 towards her flight which, along with part time work – fitted in between training – helped fund the trip.

She benefited greatly from the eye-opening experience of a successful three-week camp in south east Asia.

It did present her with a few challenges, jet lag, diet, training in the 35 degree heat and doing all this with what she thought was a possible broken foot.

On her return it was back to put some of the things she had learned back into practice at her Supergym base at Knutsford.

She explained what she got from the whole experience: “It was amazing. It did everything I thought it would do and taught me so much.

“It gave me the opportunity to train twice a day without having to think about school or work -just completely focus on training.

“The Thais took interest in me straight away. They wanted me to stay for longer but I obviously could not.”

After beating the Dutch number one before flying out to Thailand she fought once while over there against an opponent with more than 70 fights under her belt.

That earned her a stadium title as a result.

She did explain that this fight day experience was the particular eye-opening part of the stay describing that at the Patong Stadium lots of tourists and gamblers would watch her as she was warming up.

There she had to put up with gamblers lifting her arms up to see how strong she was before placing their bets.

No wonder she described it as a completely different world.

Hardman is now looking for sponsorship to get back out there for ten weeks in the summer.

She has now got some big fights coming up, starting with one in Wigan on May 3 against London Shin Kick’s Laura Prowse which will see her defend her number five ranking spot.

Hardman needs to win to stay where she is.

She is then hoping for a bit more backing for a ten-week camp in Thailand which will prepare her to take on the top girls in the sport.

Then she can think about starting her degree having applied for university!