Video interview: Scottish wheelchair racer motivated by breaking barriers as she trains hard on her family farm, where she’s joined by her new love, a pet lamb named Ruby

Training, and caring for her new pet lamb, has been keeping Sammi Kinghorn busy during lockdown and although her race plans this year have changed, she remains motivated by ambitions of Paralympic and world record success.

The British wheelchair racer has been spending the lockdown period on her family farm in the Scottish Borders and her childhood dream of having a lamb of her own came true when Ruby arrived.

Another dream of Kinghorn’s is to break 16 seconds for 100m and it is that aim which fuels her hard training sessions.

“I would love to get under that 16-second barrier,” says the double 2017 world sprint champion, who already holds the T53 200m world record with 28.61. “No one has ever done it in my classification before in the 100m. That’s what I’m training for, pushing for, right now. I love the thought of breaking barriers.

“To win a Paralympic medal, that’s the dream, that’s why I’m doing it,” continues Kinghorn, who took up para athletics in 2011 following an accident on the farm when she was 14 years old. “It’s to be in the middle of that podium one day and hear my national anthem.”

Going for those goals may have been pushed back by a year but the 24-year-old adds: “I had a really strong winter and I was really excited to race, I knew I was in a really good place.

“It was quite upsetting to think ‘I don’t know when that’s going to happen’ but I just tried to flip it on the head and say I’ve got another year to be even stronger and I’ve got another year to surprise everybody.”

» Reporting and video production by Rhona McLeod, McLeod Media
www.mcleod-media.co.uk | YouTube Rhona McLeod Media | Twitter @RMcleodMedia | Instagram @rhonamcleodmedia

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