Britain's wheelchair motocross world champion Lilly Rice is leading calls for her sport to be included on the Paralympic programme ©Getty Images

Britain's wheelchair motocross (WCMX) world champion Lily Rice has launched a campaign for her sport to be included on the Paralympic Games programme. 

The 15-year-old Welsh teenager, winner of the women’s WCMX World Championships in Cologne earlier this year, claimed sport is similar to BMX or skateboarding - both of which are set to feature on the Olympic programme at Tokyo 2020. 

"I don’t see myself as different from BMX or skateboarders, we’re all the same," Rice told the PA news agency.

"Obviously we’re riding different things, but if BMX and skateboarding can go into the Olympics then why can’t WCMX go into the Paralympics?”

WCMX sees competitors in wheelchairs performing tricks to impress a panel of judges, an event similar to skateboarding.

It claims to be the fastest-growing wheelchair sport in the world but is unlikely it could be included before the 2028 Paralympic Games in Los Angeles.

"he other thing is there are no competitions going on in the UK and there’s only just starting to be competitions going on in Europe," Rice said.

"They’ve mainly all been in the US, and because WCMX is only a grassroots sport it’s quite hard to get funding for it in general really.

"The wheelchairs alone can go from £4,000 ($5,000/€4,500) to £6,000 ($7,000/€7,000) so they’re pretty expensive, and then we’ve got all the component parts and if you break a part then you have to get that done.

"It’s quite hard to raise money to get a WCMX chair - it doesn’t get funded for by a lot of sports grants because they only do like, a couple of hundred pounds."