The British athlete became a nine-time Paralympic champion in 2024, but she is still searching for ways to keep herself ahead of the chasing pack
Shortly after her final race at the Paris Paralympics, Hannah Cockroft took a moment to reflect on yet another milestone in her illustrious athletics career.
“I vividly remember coming off the track and just sitting there in the stadium, looking up at the fans all around me,” she says of the immediate aftermath of becoming T34 800m champion, which came one week after she also secured gold over 100m.
Those successes secured the 32-year-old’s eighth and ninth Paralympic titles, a tally which started all the way back at London 2012. She became a household name at her home Games and maintains that nothing will top that experience. However, after the disquiet in Rio and silence of Tokyo, Paris brought back everything she had treasured in London.
“They filled the stadium and we haven’t seen that at a Paralympics for 12 years,” Cockroft says. “The noise and support was top tier. Everything took me back to my first Games. It was what we were waiting for and Paris knocked it out of the park.
“I remember coming on to the track and there was this one kid saying ‘Cockroft, Cockroft’ and he wouldn’t stop. I turned around to wave and he was like ‘oh my god’. How wild was it that he chose me to shout at? It gave me energy and life.”
Hannah Cockroft (Getty)
Cockroft also describes how a myriad of competitors, from compatriot Kare Adenegan – who finished second to her in the T34 100m and 800m – to US teenager Lauren Fields, told her she was an inspiration.
“I’m the girl that’s the oldest, who has been around the longest and the one that everyone watched when they were growing up,” she tells AW. “A lot of athletes started out their careers because they saw me at London 2012.
“You don’t realise the strength that you have when you’re out there, you’re just trying to do what you do. It’s when people share their stories with you that you realise it’s an absolute privilege to be the person that potentially changes someone’s life.”
Cockroft, who holds world records in both the T34 100m and 800m – 16.31 and 1:44.43 respectively – clocked 16.80 and 1:55.44 in Paris.
Such is her level of perfectionism, she believes those performances – even though she won by a considerable margin in both races – could have been better. It is a mindset born out of trying to stay ahead of the chasing pack, with more athletes competing in her category compared to years past.
Hannah Cockroft (Getty)
“We had heats in the T34 100m for the first time since London 2012,” Cockroft says. “Our classification has come a long way. I’m dead proud to be part of this movement.
“I’m always watching what the other girls are doing. There’s a teenage Chinese athlete who’s rapid and I’m certainly not getting any younger. I have to watch my back and hopefully experience will lead the way.
“I’ve done a lot of the groundwork which they’ve followed, so I feel like I need to think of new ideas. I don’t want to be the best of five girls, I want to be the best in the world.”
One aspect of para sport that is continuously on Cockroft’s mind is technology. She believes that other nations, such as Switzerland, are pulling ahead of Great Britain when it comes to investment into wheelchairs, which she states is intertwined with performance.
A prime example is Marcel Hug. The Swiss ‘Silver Bullet’ races in the OT FOXX chair and Sauber, through their links in F1, provided him with a wind tunnel to test how aerodynamic the tool of his trade is.
Hannah Cockroft (Getty)
With six out of the ten F1 teams based in the UK, Cockroft hopes that Hug’s partnership with Sauber can set a precedent for other athletes in para sport.
“I absolutely think collaborating with F1 teams would help all of us,” she says.
“You know, I’ve had engineers look at my race chair in the past and they said it wasn’t aerodynamic, adding they didn’t know how it went so quickly.
“I think we’re stuck in the mindset of: ‘Everyone is supplying the chairs so we’re just going to keep producing the same things’. It’s never really improved.
“You know, I took a step into carbon fibre at the end of 2023. That was big for me but it’s a world away of where we should be.
“The US athletes were racing in carbon fibre in 2016. We need to be proactive, not reactive.”
Looking ahead, Cockroft now has one eye on Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson’s record of 11 Paralympic gold medals, a tally she could equal or even surpass at the Los Angeles Paralympics in 2028.
“During my whole career, people asked me if I’d go for Tanni’s record,” Cockroft adds. “I’ve always looked at it and thought it’s unmanageable. Now I’m thinking: ‘I feel good, I’m getting quicker and I’ve still got things to learn’. The next four-year cycle will be the hardest one though. I’m not putting the gold medals around my neck until then.”
» This feature first appeared in the December issue of AW magazine. Subscribe to AW magazine here, check out our new podcast here or sign up to our digital archive of back issues from 1945 to the present day here
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