Dame Sarah Storey is determined to further cement her record-breaking legacy after overcoming injury and illness to reach an unprecedented ninth Paralympics.
The 46-year-old cyclist wrote her name into the history books at Tokyo 2020 by claiming a trio of golds to become Britain’s most successful Paralympian with a career total of 17.
Storey admits it would have been easy to contemplate retirement in the aftermath of surpassing the long-standing record of swimmer Mike Kenny.
Yet, having battled back from broken ribs, a partially collapsed lung and subsequently being in a “right state” due to sickness, she is once again out to break new ground after being named in GB’s squad for Paris.
“I didn’t know I needed nine Games in my life and I’m so glad I do,” Storey, who will become the first British athlete to achieve that feat, told the PA news agency following her selection on Monday.
“I just feel so thrilled. It’s good to still be competing because it would have been easy to say, ‘right that’s it, I’ve done it, I don’t need to do any more’.
“So it’s nice to be in a position to try to add to that and to cement what has been an incredible nearly 33 years on a British squad.
“I’m only here and in the kit because I want to try and win again.”
Storey initially represented her country as a swimmer, winning the first two of her golds aged 14 at Barcelona in 1992.
Following three more Paralympics in the pool, she switched to cycling before Beijing in 2008 and retains a 100 per cent Games record on the bike, spanning 12 races.
Storey will defend her C5 time trial and C4-5 road race titles between September 4 and 7 but has opted against attempting to retain individual pursuit gold in France to prevent being “spread too thinly”.
The mother of two feels back to the peak of her powers as she navigates the challenges of being an older athlete following the prolonged impact of a damaging crash which forced her to pull out of the road world championships in 2022.
“What I hadn’t realised was how long it would take to recover from that,” she said.
“I had a crash, mild concussion, partially collapsed lung because the ribs affected the pleural cavity.
“I picked up quite a lot of illness in the latter part of that year and was in hospital and they nearly admitted me basically, I was in a right state.
“Last year, I thought I was coming back and I was in good shape but maybe I wasn’t quite where I needed to be because I’m a little bit older.
“I was absolutely determined I would accept the challenge of being an older athlete without worrying about it so if it did mean I was getting slightly lower power for events or the numbers weren’t as high as they used to be, I wasn’t going to spend time fretting about that.
“This year, I’ve surpassed what I anticipated, so I did sell myself short a bit.
“I hadn’t really realised until I look back now just how much I was suffering as a result of that injury.
“It’s probably the toughest (I’ve had) – ribs are notorious, you can’t do anything to mend them but you can do more damage if you don’t look after them and that’s what I hadn’t been told.
“It did take a long time. You can’t lose part of your lung capacity if you’re going to do any kind of event.”