LAUREN Rowles will to make her debut for the GB Rowing Team at the World Championships – just months after trying the sport for the first time.

The 17-year-old could be on the verge of heading to the Rio Paramlympics as the World Championships in Aiguebelette, France also doubles as a qualification regatta for the 2016 Games.

It's a new stage in the Catshill teenager's remarkable fledgling sporting career, who has already represented England at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games as a wheelchair racer.

But she will be among those looking to ensure her boat will be on the start line on the spectacular Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon next summer after making the switch from wheelchair athletics to rowing.

She will partner Laurence Whiteley in the trunk-arms mixed double scull in Aiguebelette, six months after a chance meeting with GB Rowing Team staff at Stoke Mandeville Sports Centre. The World Championships run between August 30 and September 6.

She became a wheelchair track athlete and competed for England at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games in the T53/54 1,500m.

She was also crowned England under-16s champion at 100m and 200m during 2014 and captained the Midlands at the UK School Games before turning to rowing.

The former North Bromsgrove High School student now studies at King Edwards Sixth Form College in Stourbridge.

Whiteley has won international medals in the non-Paralympic class trunk-arms single scull during the past two years but needed to find a female partner for the mixed double in order to attempt to qualify, via the forthcoming World Championships, for Rio 2016.