Welcome back to Strong Women’s new series, Going for Gold, where we’ll be looking behind the scenes with incredible female Olympians and Paralympians in the run-up to Paris 2024. From what their training regimes look like to how they support their hormonal health, consider this your insider guide to what it takes to be one of the best in the world.

This week, we’re talking to wheelchair racer Hannah Cockroft OBE, who is one of Britain’s best-known para-athletes. Since getting into wheelchair racing as a teenager, the T34 athlete has claimed an ever-growing list of titles, including seven Paralympic and 16 World Championship gold medals. As it stands, she holds the world record for the 100 metres, 200 metres, 400 metres, 800 metres and 1500 metres in her classification, as well as an MBE and an OBE. And this summer, she’ll be heading to Paris to see how many more medals she can add to her collection. 

Hey Hannah! Can you tell us a bit about how you got into wheelchair racing in the first place, and when you realised you might have potential?

I first tried wheelchair racing when I was 15, at a ‘come and try’ sports day at Loughborough University. At the time I was already playing wheelchair basketball and competing in the discus, so I was talent-spotted and invited to go along for the day. There were a bunch of sports on offer and I’d agreed with my dad that I’d try them all. Wheelchair racing was the last one on my list. 

It was Dr Ian Thompson (husband of Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, an 11-time Paralympic gold medal winner) who first got me into a race chair and set me up on the track. A week after that, I was at Ian and Tanni’s house borrowing a racing chair to take home and being given my first training programme. 

From that point, I’ve trained six days a week, but I don’t think I realised I had the potential to excel in this sport until I broke my first world record at a track meet in Liverpool in 2010. I had no idea I’d done it until David Weir [the six-time gold-medal-winning Paralympic wheelchair athlete] approached me with a bouquet of roses to congratulate me. It was completely unexpected, but it was a moment that changed my life. From then on, I suddenly found myself preparing for my first British team and my first World Championships, but until that moment, I had spent three years training for fun and enjoying myself. That was the moment which gave me direction.

It’s clear that you work incredibly hard. What does an average week of training look like for you?

I spend about nine hours a week in my race chair, either on the track, road or roller (a treadmill device for training indoors in the race chair). I also spend four hours a week in the gym, about an hour a week with team staff (physiotherapists, doctors, nutritionists or the psychologist) and I spend about 10 hours a week (without traffic) driving to and from my training sessions. 

Outside of that, I spend a lot of the rest of my time either at sponsor engagements, corporate events or answering my emails, so my downtime is usually just an hour or so in the evening watching an episode of whatever series we’re currently invested in. 

That kind of schedule must put a lot of strain on your body. How do you fuel your body, nutrition-wise?

Most of the meals I eat pre-training are quite light: the position we sit in the racing wheelchair puts a lot of pressure on your stomach, so eating a lot beforehand can make it really uncomfortable to push. Because of this, I’ll usually have something simple beforehand like eggs on toast and a banana, then have something bigger after I’m done. 

Because I have a long drive home from training, I usually have a chocolate milkshake for some protein and carbs before I leave and then have something bigger – like spaghetti bolognese – when I get back.

Does coffee feature in your routine at all? 

No, I don’t drink coffee. But it’s just because I don’t like the taste – there’s no performance reason behind it.

And what about alcohol?

I do drink alcohol. I think it’s important to do everything in moderation and find a balance; I wouldn’t go out drinking the night before a race, but a glass of wine with friends for a celebration or a relaxed evening isn’t going to affect my training.   

On top of nutrition, sleep is obviously important for fuelling your training. How much sleep do you get, and is it enough?

I am a very good sleeper. I usually sleep between 8-10 hours a night, but I still want more.

Does your training schedule allow for hormonal fluctuations – ie, a regular menstrual cycle – and how do you manage those?

I have my periods pretty much like clockwork. I feel really lucky as they rarely affect my training sessions: I get a little bit of back pain and I get a little more tired and grumpy, but I can manage those symptoms just by controlling the times that I train. Other than that, my training doesn’t change a great deal around my period, but it can if I need it to.

I have a really open and honest relationship with my coach; if I’m struggling, he’s happy to be flexible and just work with how my body is feeling that day.

On the morning of a big race, how do you prepare?

I usually pack my bag and lay out my kit the night before, so in the morning all I need to do is change my jewellery (I have a pair of four-leaf clover earrings that my mum bought me for the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games that I always wear when I race), eat a banana (as sometimes it’s all I can stomach) and do my go-to warm-up routine. 

And what about after a win – how do you celebrate?

I’m not really one for celebrating because I do a lot of back-to-back races and there’s usually something else I need to switch my focus to pretty quickly. I do sometimes regret this because a lot of my victories pass me by, but ultimately I’m results-driven and always want more. 

For me, a celebration usually looks like a pizza and a film on the sofa – I’m usually too tired to do much else!

Being an athlete comes with its difficulties – what’s been the mentally toughest moment in your career to date, and how did you cope with it?

My 2018 season was one of my career’s toughest moments to date because nothing went to plan. Not only was I beaten for the first time at a major championship at the European Championships in Berlin (I got silver in the 100m and only just scraped a gold in the 800m), but I lost my 100m world record at the London Olympic stadium in front of 40,000 people and struggled to find the right balance between athletics and everything else in life (at the time, I was presenting a slot for BBC Countryfile so travelling a lot to film). 

The defeats definitely hurt, but it was the headlines that hurt more. I remember reading people say I’d lost my crown and needed to retire. I was only 26 years old.

At the time I just ploughed on because it was the only thing I knew how to do, but that meant I had very little breathing room or energy to think about what was happening. It was only after losing my world record that I woke up and realised things had to change. 

After that season, I took back control. I left my management company, moved house and changed training partners and gym coach. I made a conscious effort to change everything that didn’t fit with the plan and committed to leaving the track if the changes didn’t lead to an improvement. It was a lot of big changes all at once but I’m now really glad it happened because otherwise I would have been stuck in a cycle of distractions for at least another year. 

At the World Championships in 2019, I took back my 100m world record and won gold. I’m pleased to say I haven’t lost it again since!

Right now, who inspires you?

I’m really lucky to be surrounded by some incredible women in my sport, but the biggest icon is probably Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson. She won 11 Paralympic gold medals and is still the first name most people say when they’re asked to name a Paralympian, so she’s a big inspiration for many people.

If you could give one piece of advice to an amateur wheelchair racer looking to improve, what would it be?

Practise your start in every training session. Every race has a start, so whether you want to be a sprinter or a marathon racer, it’s important to get the start right; the stronger your start, the stronger your overall race will be.

Images: Getty