Hannah Cockroft hasn’t got to where she is by choosing the easy route. The Paralympic T34 100m and 800m champion, and the world record holder in the T34 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m and 1500m, is peppering up her Paris experience by throwing one of the most stressful life events into the mix. “You know when people ask if you have any advice for your younger self,” she says. “It would be: ‘Don’t plan a wedding the same year as a Paralympic Games.’”
Cockroft’s husband-to-be is her fellow ParalympicsGB athlete Nathan Maguire, who competes in the T54 400m, 800m and 1500m and once asked for her autograph at a meet-the-athlete event before later throwing it in the bin. The pair will marry three weeks after the end of the Games. “We’ve been very busy bees and I just keep reminding myself there is no pressure on a wedding, no expectation, you’ve just got to go there and enjoy the day,” Cockroft says. The pressure comes now.
Cockroft burst into the public consciousness on the chilly first night of para-athletics at London 2012, powering across the 100m line in her racing wheelchair, fearsome arms raised. It was the first of seven Paralympic golds she has since collected, and in Paris she will be trying to retain her T34 100m and 800m crowns, as well as taking a leg of the 4x100m universal relay.
After the Covid-hit games in Tokyo three years ago, Cockroft cannot wait to have spectators back at venues. “It means everything,” she says. “Ultimately sport is entertainment … I am an entertainer, I like tension. Getting on that track and having no one watching, I really struggled. I remember vividly us being introduced to the ‘crowd’ and in my head I was like: ‘What is the point? Why am I here?’ It was not an enjoyable experience for me.
“So I’m really looking forward to getting back out there as that’s why we do it. We want people to see the work that we’ve done, we want people to cheer for us, we want to people to enjoy what we do and, for me, I want as many eyes to see my sport as possible and hopefully some of those eyes will go – I can do that and I want to be part of that. The Paralympics is one of the only spaces where parasport gets a crowd, so I milk it as much as I can.”
No longer the “very naive 20-year-old” from London, Cockroft has become an experienced media performer in the intervening 12 years and earlier this year criticised government policy regarding disabled people. The 32-year-old also had to learn the hard way that getting coverage for Paralympic sport is not as easy as it might at first have seemed.
“I had to realise that London was not a normal Games, not what the Paralympics normally has on offer, and I think that was quite a difficult learning curve,” she says. “The more four-year cycles I’ve done, I’ve realised that the amount of tension, the media, the expectation, the exposure all of that was not … obviously it was real, but isn’t what we normally get.
“[But] sport-wise I’ve seen athletics grow tenfold. London had two heats for the 100m and the 200m, and this year will be the first time that I get heats for the 100m again, so that’s really exciting for me.
“The T34 girls have gone from being one of the smallest classes to now one of the biggest. I feel like myself and Kare [Adenegan], my teammate, have driven that, we’ve had that rivalry, passed the crown from one to the other, and I think the more you can do that, the more attention you get.”
Cockroft adds: “I’ve seen the whole Paralympic movement grow, the awareness of it. It was amazing after the Olympics to see everyone going: ‘Only three weeks to the Paralympics and then we get to do this all again.’
“I don’t recall ever seeing people speak about the Paralympics like that. But there are a few other things that need to pick back up from where they were in London 2012 because they’re not where they were.”
Four Games down the line and an old hand, has Cockroft found herself slotting into a different role in the team? “I keep getting called the veteran, which is a massive privilege but also makes me feel very old at 32,” she says. “Give me a few more years.
“Everyone keeps saying: ‘This must be your last Games,’ but I’m like: ‘Don’t retire me until I’ve retired thank you, I’m still going.’”
And Cockroft still has a few things to tick off. She is yet to make an opening ceremony and there’s the tantalising possibility of visiting a Parisian tattoo parlour. If there’s time between the medal hunting and wedding planning, of course.
