Cockroft targets British clean sweep of medals in Paris Games
Hannah Cockroft OBE is backing Britain’s wheelchair racers to clinch a stunning clean sweep at the Paris Paralympic Games.
The seven-time champion from Halifax will be looking to defend her T34 100m title for the third Games in a row but faces stiff competition from Kare Adenegan, the only athlete to ever beat her on the international stage.
They are likely to be joined by Fabienne André, who has helped form a British and English one-two-three at the 2023 World Championships and 2022 Commonwealth Games.
“In Britain, we've got my main rival Kare Adenegan,” said the 31-year-old. “But then there's also a Fabs, Fabienne Andre, my other British teammate, she's just recently taken the step up onto the podium.”
She added: “And it's incredible to see a British 1-2-3 at a championships and hopefully, we can do that at the Paralympic Games because I've never seen it at a Paralympic Games, so that would be really good.
“I think it's really realistic for us to get a clean sweep. I've seen how Fabienne is pushing this year, and she's absolutely flying.
“It’s a high, high possibility in the 100m that we could have a British 1-2-3 and that'll be a very special moment.”
She added: “We have this incredible opportunity to have a games back in Europe, back where we know that people really do support parasport and support disability sport.
“And it's what the Paralympic Movement needs. It's been 12 years since 2012, that's an entire generation of young people who haven't really watched the Paralympic games because of, you know, time differences or where it's been held, and haven't really been given the exposure to it.
“The more we can expose them to it, the bigger the sport will get and we'll get that excitement that we had around London 2012.
“I think that's what we're really missing, the excitement and people really wanting to watch what we do, I do believe that there are people out there, we just have to open them up to it.”
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