A HALSTEAD BMX world champion has joined forces with a children’s author to raise money for zoos.

Freia Challis, 12, won the championship in July last year.

She competed at the 2019 UCI BMX World Championships 2019 in Heusden-Zolder, Belgium, winning every heat and then the final in the 11-year-old girls’ category.

Now she has teamed up with Halstead children’s author Josie Dom, 49, to help struggling zoos across the UK, including Colchester.

Josie is the author of popular children’s picture books Lum and Lum’s Mum and her latest project is a poem on the animal kingdom Olympics where animals compete instead of humans.

Josie has launched a fundraising campaign which sees athletes reading their sport’s verse from her Animalympics poem, in exchange for a donation to Josie’s GoFundMe campaign.

Other sportsmen and women fronting the campaign are ex-Olympians from Team GB.

They include David Hemery, who won gold in the 400m hurdles at the 1968 Olympics; Wendy Smith, a 2004 Paralympian; Jo Mersh, who competed at the 2004 Olympics; and Marcus Mepstead, a fencer at the 2016 Olympics.

The poem was inspired during lockdown when Josie’s daughter claimed sloths were good swimmers.

Josie said: “I soon got plotting with my family which animals would be great at the particular Olympic sports.

“The result – an epic poem with buffalo playing football, orangutans playing tennis and Woodpecker Will organising the whole thing.”

The campaign will raise money for zoos hit hard by the pandemic and which re-opened just a few weeks ago. Freia said:“I’ve been visiting Colchester Zoo since I was very young.

“I am very excited to be involved in helping to raise funds for such a great cause.”

Donors to the campaign will get a daily video on email covering the Animalympics in place of the real Olympics coverage.

They will also have the chance to nominate their favourite zoo.

Visit gofundme.com/f/animalympics-helps-zoos for more information.