Sarah's Blog

Reflecting on Beijing � October 2008

After a hectic summer I have finally found the time to update you all.
Well first of all Beijing and my two gold medals. I was overjoyed to get what I set out to achieve at the start of the year.

The first came in the 3,000m where I lowered the world record twice in one day to a time that would have placed me 7th at the Olympic Games just a few weeks earlier! I was so happy I can't remember much about the race except my legs were aching.

The second was in the Individual Road Time Trial where I claimed gold with a cushion of almost 90 seconds from nearest rival, the USA's Jennifer Schuble, in a time of 37 mins 16.65 seconds. I was ecstatic to have won after how close this race was to my track race. I felt really strong and although I could still feel Wednesday�s pursuit in my legs and I was a bit wobbly on a few corners, I did it!

And then I returned home from Beijing earlier than the rest of the team to compete at the able-bodied Championships - a move that paid off as I created another slice of history! I became Great Britain's first ever Paralympian to win the title at a Senior able-bodied National Championship event winning the Senior Women�s 3,000m Individual Pursuit Title at the Velodrome in Manchester.

So there�s a lot of gold in our house now � as hubby Barney took two gold medals including tandem pilot to Anthony Kappes in the B&V1 1-3 Sprint. I now have seven Paralympic golds, having won five as a Paralympic swimmer.

I know what it takes to push our bodies and minds to their limits in order to achieve against the odds. Believe me when I say �there are no boundaries to what we can achieve!�

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Hello everyone, since becoming patron of SVNW I have been doing a great deal of racing. Although some of it has been interrupted due to the bad weather and flooding in areas where I was planning to race. Fortunately last weekend's National Disability Road Circuit Champs were unaffected on a hill up in Derbyshire and I was able to record my 1st win on the road in this country this year.

At the moment all my focus is for the World Championships in Bordeaux in August. I'll be racing 4 events at the Championships, 2 on the track (500m TT and 3,000m individual pursuit) and 2 on the road (road TT and road race).

I'm very eager to race there now, I've done a lot of preparation races and competing across the country since the end of March, so it's definitely time to put all the hard work together and try and retain my world champion status.

Outside of my training I have been finding time to work with the swimmers in the north-west disability swim squad and I am always on the look out for new talent. We had a squad session on a weekend when one of my events was postponed due to flooding, and although some of the GB squad swimmers were away on a camp, there was a good set of swimmers there and we did a starts and turns clinic, where I was in the water doing some demo's. It was great fun, the swimmers certainly improved by the end of the session and we now have so many more swimmers capable of doing the full 2 hour session, something that wasn't happening a couple of years ago. The greatest part about the job is that so many of the swimmers are now asking to stay in for longer, rather than having to be invited to stay in!

Anyway, keep your fingers crossed for the world champs and keep up with the general results on www.britishcycling.org.uk

Thanks! Sarah