The road to Tokyo has been hard but the British wheelchair racer is confident she can add to her five Paralympic gold medals
Hannah Cockroft prepared for the Tokyo Paralympics in the best way she knows how: breaking world records. “Wait a minute …” she says, trying to pull together her performances at the World Para Athletics grand prix in Switzerland. “… so across the four I broke the 100, 200, 400 and 800. But over the four I broke them seven times.”
Cockroft has consistently been setting the bar ever higher since she announced herself to the world at the 2012 Paralympics. After the London Games she went seven years unbeaten in the four distances she competes at the T34 wheelchair category, winning five Paralympic gold medals. That solitary defeat, to her British teammate Kare Adenegan in 2019, caused her to rethink her approach and launch another period of dominance on the track. To call her a natural-born competitor may be underselling it.