Birmingham target set to extend Hannah Cockroft's career
Hannah Cockroft says being able to aim for her first ever Commonwealth Games will provide the perfect motivation to keep training hard after next year's Paralympic Games in Tokyo and delay any potential retirement plans, writes Jessica Whittington.
The 28-year-old has five Paralympic wheelchair racing gold medals to her name as well as 12 world titles but so far in her career her T34 classification has not been included in the Commonwealth Games programme.
But the Birmingham 2022 medal schedule announced on Wednesday features a women's T33/34 100m event and she is relishing the chance to pull on an England vest and go for gold.
Any thoughts Cockroft had had around bringing the curtain down on her career in Tokyo have now been shelved.
"I think the Commonwealths is really going to give me that drive, especially following the Paralympics, to just keep going and keep training," she says.
"I didn't know if Tokyo was going to be my last but, now this has been announced, it's definitely not going to be!"
The 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester was the first event in which para sport was fully integrated into the programme and sharing her memories of past para-athletics moments, Cockroft says: "I remember watching Glasgow (in 2014) with great intent.
"One of my best friends, Sammi Kinghorn, raced there in the 1500m and I remember just watching the race thinking 'I could sit in that pack, I could be in that race, I could do quite well'. Really quite jealous that everyone was at this Games that was so close to home and I couldn't be there.
"Obviously the last Games were on the Gold Coast and my boyfriend (fellow wheelchair racer Nathan Maguire) raced out there," Cockroft adds.
"Again I watched that with great intent and I think he was 0.03 of a second off a medal, so that sucks!
"But it's always such a brilliant event. Someone earlier referred to it as the 'friendly games' and I think that's what it is.
"I think that is what I am most looking forward to - the fact that I can be there, surrounded by friends and representing England instead of Great Britain, it's something different and something new."
Click here to read more from Hannah Cockroft on the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, while more about the Birmingham 2022 medal event programme can be found here.
(Photos by Mark Shearman)
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