PLUCKY eight-year-old Lukas Letts has fought his way through to become a world champion in karate - despite suffering from chronic asthma.

The Colley Gate youngster clinched a gold medal and a bronze in his category at the GKR Karate World Championships at the Echo Arena, Liverpool, earlier this month.

He trains at least three times a week, at clubs in Cradley, Old Hill and Quarry Bank - and little would spectators at the world championships have guessed that he has his own personal battle with asthma.

"He's pretty brave and takes his inhalers and steroids every day," said Lukas's grandmother, 52-year-old Karen Cooper, of Beecher Road East, Colley Gate.

"In karate classes he sometimes has to stop to take his inhalers but he has always managed to keep going at competitions and nobody watching would guess he has bad asthma.

"Now he's a world champion and I'm proud as punch."

Lukas, who lives with his mother, Laura Cooper, in Barnswood Close, Colley Gate, took up karate just before turning five years old.

Before competitions he increases his training regime to four or five times a week.

And that certainly paid off in the run-up to the world championships, where he won his gold medal for the Kata sequence of moves and a bronze in the Kumite discipline.

Lukas, a pupil at Caslon Primary School, gained his brown belt in karate aged just seven and he is now a second Kyu - second stage brown belt.

He has won several regional tournaments in Birmingham and became UK champion twice in Sheffield.

Altogether he has amassed 10 gold medals, two silvers and a bronze in his karate career.

His headteacher, Karen Brass, said: "We are all extremely proud of Lukas and enjoy sharing his successes in our achievement assemblies.”