Hannah Cockroft on why following the Paralympics is a hard act to follow

AW female para athlete of 2025 writes about the challenges of coming off the back of Paralympic year and the work that went into adding to her substantial collection of World Para Champs golds.

Last year was always going to be a hard one to follow. Boasting both a World Para Athletics Championships and the Paris Paralympic Games, 2024 was a season bursting with opportunity, challenge and a unique chance to complete “the double” within a year. Throw in a wedding and a honeymoon, the once in a lifetime moments just kept coming. 

So, it should come as no surprise that I found it difficult to motivate myself for the 2025 season. With the promise of another World Para Athletics Championships only being confirmed in December last year, I had to pull myself away from the festivities and push myself back into the harsh realities of winter training.

Due to playing catch-up after the disruption of the pandemic, we have seen three World Para Athletics Championships in three consecutive years, along with other major championships still sticking to their original schedule. New Delhi this summer marked the end of a long run of high-pressure events and throughout the year I felt myself counting down to a proper break from what has been a demanding cycle.

The carrot throughout the year was the offer of a 400m for my  T34 classification, which hasn’t been included in a World Championships schedule since 2015. The 400m is probably my favourite event – not as intense as the 100m, and happily not as far as the 800m. 

It was my first event when we got to India, and it felt a relief not to be thrown straight into my competitive Paralympic events. I had time to check out my competition, the track, the call room and the crowd so I knew what to expect later. 

When the race came around, frustratingly there were only four girls on the start line, including myself. I’m unsure why more didn’t enter and it was disappointing to see our opportunity for an extra event on the Paralympic schedule be taken away as quickly as it was added.

This opportunity did, however, give me the chance to race for and win three gold medals, taking my World Championships gold medal to 19, and I enjoyed the training throughout the year for it. 

My highlight of the whole championships, though, was seeing my husband, Nathan Maguire, bring home a hard-fought bronze medal in the T54 1500m, and getting to watch trackside with his parents and coaches. Everyone hangs medals around my neck before the race has even begun, but, as Nathan is just breaking onto the podiums, he reminds me of the excitement that success brings.  

After the hype of Paris and being back in front of 60,000 people, it was quite a contrast and quite discouraging to see no more than 500 people sparsely filling a stadium of the same size in India. I’m always hopeful after a Paralympic year that the interest will continue to follow us, at least into the following year. When the announcement of the championships came at the end of 2024, after the Paris excitement had died down, and being taken to a city that had poor ticket sales for the last athletics event it held; the Commonwealth Games in 2010, I think we were all worried it was not going to be well attended. 

Whilst I understand the importance of taking Para Sport outside of Europe for its global development, I do hope that this is another reminder to organisers that they need to work harder to fill the stadiums and give us the crowds we deserve.

What did lift my spirits was the amount of support the team received online. It was such a boost to see people asking where they could watch and sending their congratulations and I can only hope that World Para Athletics also saw those messages and give fans more opportunities to come and support us in the future.

A major focus for me this year has been working on my push technique in the 800m, for it to be smoother and to bring my arms higher in every push. Altering a push technique is similar to changing how you run, it’s so deeply ingrained that it’s still a work in progress, but the work showed throughout the season. After pushing my second-fastest 800m ever, 1.45.87 in Switzerland in May, I was proud of my push in India where I broke 1.50.00 for the first time at a major championships. It gave me some much-needed confidence that the work we’ve been doing this year was heading in the right direction.

Now I look ahead to a year that I have never experienced in my career, a year with no major championship on offer. With my event not included in the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow next summer, and no host announced for a Para athletics European Championships, I find myself in a place of freedom. 

I have seen 2026 coming for a long time, and for most of that time I have feared its arrival but I am now optimistic that what is on offer to me is an opportunity to get creative. Instead of following the same blueprint because we have something to be ready for, I can get stronger and I can spend summer with family and friends for the first time in nearly 15 years. So, you may not see me on as many start lines next year but, be assured, I’ll be quietly laying the groundwork for LA 2028.