Adapt, Embrace, Thrive: a story from a Paralympian
Hannah Cockroft MBE, DL
We were privileged to have record-breaking Paralympic Champion and Yorkshire lass, Hannah Cockroft, attend one of our events this year where she gave an inspiring talk on resilience and how to stay true to your goals to ensure your focus holds fast. We were so impressed, we have invited her back to share her story with you all.
"If the past year has taught us anything, it’s how to adapt and embrace the changes that are thrust upon us. For me, this meant adapting and reacting to the sudden closures of tracks and gyms and the postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. With my usual training facilities off limits, I had to find a new way to prepare for a Games. As five- time Paralympic Champion in the sport of wheelchair racing, I was ready and waiting to go and represent my country for a third time at the Games, but instead I was left scrambling around borrowing dumbbells and ordering road training tyres to try and tide me over, through what we initially thought was going to be a 5 week lockdown.
But, as the weeks inside turned to months, I became more creative and confident in finding ways to keep active. Whereas others could use their hour of outdoor exercise everyday to run around the local field or park, myself and my boyfriend, European Champion Nathan Maguire, explored every road in our local area to find a route long enough for our sessions. We slowly started to collect gym equipment online to build a home gym in our garage and we transformed our spare bedroom into a training room to put our rollers (an indoor training rig, where we can push without forward motion) in. I’m so thankful now that we made the decision to keep trying to do what we love, as the lockdowns and restrictions have hung over our last 16 months of preparation.
Growing up, sport was never an avenue I thought I would take as a career path. At school, PE was off limits to me, and I spent the lessons doing homework or reading. When I first saw para sport at age 12, I was instantly hooked. I was introduced to wheelchair basketball when they came into my secondary school to do a demo and I knew it was something I wanted to do. Through the team, I tried everything, from wheelchair tennis to wheelchair rugby, until I came across wheelchair racing.
Many people think that I jumped in a racing wheelchair and was instantly good at it, but from starting at age 15, I didn’t make my first Great Britain team until I was 19 years old. Everyone knows my success from then on, through the London 2012 Paralympic Games and onto numerous World and European Championships, but it’s the times where things aren’t on track that you truly learn what you’re made of. In 2015, I lost my undefeated reign of 7 years as I came second in a 400m race at a World Championships qualifying competition. It’s a race that nobody would have known about had I won it, but because I came second, it seemed to be everywhere. I was at University at the time, and trying to juggle full time second year study with full time elite training.
It was a balance that just didn’t work for me, so I made the decision to make changes that would save my track performances and aid my success at the 2016 Paralympic Games just a year later in Rio. I left University, moved home to Halifax, West Yorkshire and went back to my home club. 6 weeks later, I became World Champion for the 6th, 7th and 8th times.
In 2018, I suffered a similar fate as I took my foot off the gas a little to focus on some presenting work with the BBC. I was comfortable in training, so felt I had the time to take on my dream role as a presenter on BBC Countryfile. I had an amazing few months travelling the country, being a cattle farmer, a crofter and a gamekeeper amongst other things, but all the while, my training was taking more of a back seat than I realised. At the Anniversary Games that July, I lost my 100m World Record and my second ever race but this time, I couldn’t pull it back. I won my first ever silver medal at that years European Championships.
These experiences made me realise that we can do anything, but we can’t do everything- not at the same time at least! We have to accept and acknowledge our mistakes to move forward, and we cannot be afraid of change if that is the only way to be successful. After the European Championships in 2018, I made many changes; I moved to Chester to train with a new club, I changed coaches, I got a new race chair and I knew that it was an all or nothing move. Thankfully, at my last major championships before the pandemic, I became World Champion for the 12th time, and took back my 100m World Record; my choices and changes were the right ones to make, I just had to be brave enough to make them.
I have just been selected to represent Great Britain at my third Paralympic Games this August out in Tokyo, Japan. Thankfully, the Games currently appear to be going ahead after an unsure few months and my lockdown home training seems to be paying off. In May this year, I competed in Switzerland where I raced 9 times and broke 7 World Records and my training continues to go well now we are back on tracks and in gyms. Although things may not be back to complete normality yet, fear of change is now a thing of the past as 2020 has given me the confidence that I can get through anything.
Adaption and acceptance is now a part of our everyday and as there aren’t many positives to take away from a global pandemic, we have to take what we can!"
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