Grey-thompson tipping Kinghorn to be a future queen of her sport
L Paralympic legend says the best is still to come from 21-year-old
With two world titles to her name at just 21, Sammi Kinghorn is the new golden girl of British wheelchair racing – yet Dame Tanni Grey-thompson insists the best is still yet to come from the Melrose star.
Kinghorn finished just outside of the medals at last year’s Rio Paralympic Games, but was thrown into the spotlight wheh she won the T53 100m and 200m gold at the World Championships in London in August.
In September, Kinghorn became the first para-athlete to be crowned Scottish Sportsperson of the Year, and has recently turned her hand to the marathon distance in a bid to qualify for next year’s Commonwealth Games.
But with such success coming in the early stages of her career, Grey-thompson – a winner of 11 Paralympic titles – insists the athletics world truly is Kinghorn’s oyster for years to come.
“The World Championships were incredible for her. She’ll be riding on the wave of that at the moment,” she said. “She did a debut marathon in Chicago and went really quickly there. Coming off an amazing season, the winter is really dull and you have to start again. That will be the difficult part for her now. You have to put in all the base miles, but if she does that, she can be really, really good. It’s got to be what she wants. She’s still a relatively young athlete, so it’s about her doing the stuff she wants to do without loads of pressure. But she has the ability to be incredibly talented.”
Grey-thompson was speaking at a forum for Not a Red Card, a campaign by financial services company Legal & General aimed at using sport as a means of tackling the stigma surrounding mental health.
With the likes of hockey player Helen Richardson- walsh, swimmer Michael Jamieson and cricketer Marcus Trescothick all speaking about their mental health, never has the psychological wellbeing of elite athletes been more in the limelight – but it’s something Grey-thompson insists can only be a good thing.
“Everyone from the outside thinks [athletes have] got the really privileged life, and to an extent you have. You have something that hundreds of thousands of people will never get to do,” she said.
“But behind the glamour, there’s a really difficult part to it. You get more access to mental health help than the average person because of the people around the team who will help you.
“It’s highlighting that if athletes are struggling, then lots of other people are too.
“It’s about normalising mental health. There’s so many people facing issues that still they don’t feel able to discuss, but having sportspeople talking about it makes it easier.” l Find out more at www.legalandgeneral.com/notaredcard or by searching #notaredcard