Paralympics 2024: 10 GB stars going for gold in Paris
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Great Britain’s Paralympic stars begin their quest for gold in Paris on Thursday, looking to emulate the Olympic heroes of earlier this summer.
The British team includes 215 athletes, guides and pilots, and features competitors in all but three of the 22 sports on the Games programme.
Here is our guide to 10 of the stars hoping to win gold over the next fortnight…
Hannah Cockroft – athletics
Seven times Cockroft has lined up in a Paralympic final and not once has finished with anything other than gold. The wheelchair racer won three titles in Rio, sandwiched between golden doubles in London and Tokyo, and remains the dominant force in both the T34 100m and 800m, having won both events at each of the past five World Championships.
“The pressure builds every year,” the 32-year-old says. “The more you win, the more people expect you to win.” And, once again, Britain does.
One of the most recognisable names on the ParalympicsGB roster, Cox shot to fame at Rio 2016 when becoming the first Brit in more than 30 years to win gold medals in two different sports, cycling and athletics, at the same Games.
The 33-year-old has focused on the velodrome since Tokyo, where she won gold in the C4-5 500m time-trial and the mixed team sprint events. Retaining both titles is the target in Paris.
Iona Winnifrith – swimming
Winnifrith had barely celebrated her first birthday when London 2012 began and will be the youngest member of ParalympicsGB in Paris, aged just 13.
Far from simply being along for the experience, though, the teenager has genuine medal aspirations, having become a double European champion in Madeira earlier this year.
Dame Sarah Storey – cycling
From one end of the experience spectrum to the other. Storey won her first Paralympic medal an incredible 19 years before Winnifrith was even born, but is back for a record-breaking ninth Games, the most of any British athlete.
The 46-year-old’s 17 career gold medals — across swimming and cycling — mean she is already the country’s most successful Paralympian, but she is out to add two more in the time-trial and road race.
Experience: Kadeena Cox, Dame Sarah Storey and Hannah Cockroft all know what it takes to win Paralympic gold
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Smith was Britain’s flag bearer at the closing ceremony in Tokyo three years ago, having become the country’s most successful boccia player by defending his Olympic crown.
Now, the 35-year-old is bidding for a hat-trick in the BC1 class, but believes the competition is tougher than ever.
“There are probably about five or six athletes that could quite easily challenge in the BC1, which is probably the first time ever it’s been that competitive,” he says. “That’s exciting.”
Young delivered one of the most iconic British moments of the Tokyo Games three years ago when winning a surprise gold medal in the T38 100m — or a surprise, at least, to everyone but himself.
The intervening years as a marked man have not been straightforward, but the 24-year-old is now back in peak form, having won world silver in May and then lowered his personal best to 10.93sec in June.
Grinham heads to Paris in good form, having won individual gold at the final major event before the Games, the European Para Cup in the Czech Republic.
What makes her story particularly inspirational, though, is that the 31-year-old will be seven months pregnant by the time she goes for gold at Les Invalides, deciding after several miscarriages that her sporting dreams need not be put on hold.
“I don’t want to be in the position where the older I get I’m holding off having a family for my career,” she says. “Why can’t I have both?”
Rowles is looking to become the first British rower to win three successive Paralympic gold medals, but will have to do so without Laurence Whiteley, her mixed double sculls partner at each of the past two Games.
Whiteley retired after Tokyo, leaving Rowles to compete solo for a spell, before teaming up with Gregg Stevenson, a former Commando who lost both of his legs while serving in Afghanistan in 2009.
Sammi Kinghorn is targeting four medals in Paris
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Sammi Kinghorn – athletics
Kinghorn was just 14 when a horrific accident on her family’s farm in Scotland left her paralysed from the waist down and eventually led her to take up wheelchair racing.
She won silver and bronze in Tokyo, but the Countryfile presenter has taken her athletics career to new heights in the years since and could emerge as one of the British stars of these Games.
The 28-year-old is targeting four medals, in the 100m, 400m, 800m and 1,500m; such is her range that she is the world champion in the shortest of those events and the world record holder in the longest.
Still only 26, Hewett has won almost everything there is to win in wheelchair tennis, with his singles triumph at Wimbledon this year meaning he has completed the career Grand Slam both solo and in the doubles format.
But, despite 30 Major titles, all three of his Paralympic medals have so far been silver. He has two chances to correct that in Paris, one in the singles and another with regular partner Gordon Reid in the doubles.