Paralympics 2024: Sarah Storey bidding for glory at ninth Games as 'chance too good to turn down', inspired by children
By Flo Clifford
Published 26/08/2024 at 13:10 GMT+1
Britain's most successful Paralympian of all time, Sarah Storey, is lining up in Paris for her ninth Games, inspired by having her young children cheering her on. Storey's Paralympic career spans both cycling and swimming and began in 1992, when she made history as the first Paralympian to win five golds before turning 19. She aims to defend her road race and road time trial titles this summer.
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Sarah Storey, Britain's most decorated and successful Paralympian of all time, will line up for her ninth Paralympic Games in Paris this month, inspired by having her young children watching on.
Storey has 28 medals - including 17 golds - across cycling and swimming in a career dating back to the 1992 Games in Barcelona. She lines up in Paris as the favourite to add to her haul.
A serious crash derailed her 2022 season and it was only this year that she felt she had recovered sufficiently to challenge for Paralympic medals once more.
The knowledge that her children, 10-year-old Louisa and six-year-old Charlie, would be watching her compete was the push she needed to target Paris, as well as the thought of the return to 'normal' after the Covid-impacted Tokyo Games.
"When we made the decision after Tokyo that I would carry on, there was no guarantee that we would not still be in some form of lockdown," she told the BBC.
"But the chance to have a normal Games with supporters, fans, children on the roadside, the chance to experience that atmosphere, was too good to turn down. Charlie has never experienced a Games - hopefully he and Louisa will remember this."
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Born without a functioning left hand after it became tangled in the umbilical cord in the womb, Storey started training as a swimmer aged 10 and was competing in the Paralympics just four years later.
Since winning five Paralympic golds as a teenager, Storey has dominated both her chosen sports, winning gold in every C5 category road time trial since switching from swimming in Beijing 2008.
The 46-year-old will also hope to defend her road race title in the C4-5 category, which she won in Rio 2016 and Tokyo, and continue her perfect streak of only ever winning gold medals as an Olympic para-cyclist.
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Dame Sarah Storey poses with her 28 Paralympic medals on June 19, 2024 in Disley, England.
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But a ninth Games was not always guaranteed for her after she broke multiple ribs as well as suffering a punctured lung and concussion in a severe crash in 2022.
"The recovery was a lot longer than I anticipated, it wasn't until the beginning of this year that I started to see improvements in power," she said.
"Then I was seeing my highest ever power on the road, which at the age of 46 is no mean feat. Nearly two years later, my body has finally started to recover after having such a horrendous time.
"There was one point where I wondered if age had caught up with me, or whether I was unlucky that all this was happening at the same time."
Storey will be one of the older members of Team GB's Paralympics cycling squad in Paris, which will also feature world individual pursuit champion 19-year-old Archie Atkinson, Olympic champions Neil and Lora Fachie and Jaco van Gass among many other strong medal contenders.
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Five of Storey's cycling gold medals have come on the track but she will not be competing at the velodrome this year, focusing entirely on the road.
Winning gold in the two races she is targeting would propel her up the standings to the fourth-most successful Paralympian of all time, and an astonishing 10th Games remains a possibility.
She will be 50 when LA 2028 rolls around, but insists that no decision had yet been made.
"I've never gone into any Games thinking it is my last one, I am focusing on what is needed and the decisions come later," she said.
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