Britain’s Greatest Ever Female Paralympian

Dame Sarah Storey has just won Britain’s first gold medal at the Tokyo Paralympic Games - but she’s no stranger to the top spot of the podium.

Her win in the C5 3,000m individual pursuit is Dame Sarah’s 15th (!!) Paralympic Gold medal. An absolutely incredible achievement - and we want to tell you a little more about her journey to becoming Britain’s greatest EVER female Paralympic athlete at the age of 43.

Storey, who was born without a fully functioning left hand, started her sporting career as a swimmer at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics (aged just 14). She competed at four Games in the pool, winning 15 Paralympic medals (including five golds - jus’ saying) before switching to cycling in 2005.

Since then, she’s been pretty much (to use the technical term) un-fucking-stoppable on the track and road. Dominating the sport and breaking a whopping 76 (!!) world records both before and after becoming a mother.

"Being able to come back after two pregnancies - that's got to be my biggest achievement," she told Sky Sports News ahead of this summer's Games.

Storey is no stranger to overcoming challenges to reach success. In her youth, she faced bullying, an eating disorder and Chronic fatigue syndrome.

After her medal-winning success aged 14, returning to school proved extremely challenging. She was tormented by other pupils, which ultimately led to an eating disorder. Thankfully, with the help of her family, Storey managed to overcome the disorder and despite the difficulties at school, continued to compete and win in the pool.

But so much success at such a young age took its toll:

"When you win five gold medals before your 19th birthday people assume you're invincible, but I ended up with chronic fatigue syndrome," she told Cyclist.

Chronic fatigue (for those that don’t know), is a debilitating illness that causes extreme tiredness amongst many other things (it’s a condition I struggled with myself at a similar age to Dame Sarah).

But despite battling the condition, Dame Sarah continued to compete and achieve success in the pool until (yet another) challenge came her way. Persistent ear problems (which reportedly could’ve led to her going deaf if they’d been ignored) pushed the athlete towards a career change in 2005.

Storey actually took up cycling to maintain her fitness when she could no longer swim. But in an unbelievable turn of events had, within the feckin’ year, broken the para-cycling world record in the 3,000m individual pursuit.

To be a world record-breaking (and gold medal-winning) athlete in not one, but two completely different sports in one lifetime is a mind-blowing feat. (Share some of your talents around would you plz Dame Sarah?).

And since then, her winning streak hasn’t stopped.

In 2008 at the Beijing Paralympics, she and husband Barney Storey (a fellow track cyclist who she’d married just a year earlier) both won gold medals on the same day - what are the odds!? (Stealing medals & hearts).

And in 2010 she became the very first para-cyclist to compete for England at the Commonwealth Games against non-disabled cyclists.

Dame Sarah’s career so far has been a long and incredibly successful one and this incredible woman shows no signs of slowing down yet. If she successfully defends her time trial and road race crowns next week, her gold medal count will take her one above swimmer Mike Kenny’s title as Britain’s Greatest Paralympian (with 17 to his name).

But let’s not count our chickens. Whether or not Dame Sarah does reach that milestone, she’ll remain one of the most incredible and decorated athletes of all time - and an all-round badass.