Hannah Cockroft column

Why Hannah’s Dubai display was a huge – and very welcome – surprise!

I was massively surprised to see the clock stop at 16.77 at the end of my 100m at the World Championships!

I’ve not gone close to that time in training and didn’t think I was going to do a sub 17-second this year – I was setting that as my goal for 2020.

I felt really calm on race day. I was confident I had trained as hard as I could and just went in with the attitude of going as fast as possible. Then I produced that! It was a massive, and very welcome, surprise.

I’ve made so many changes this year to help me become a better athlete. I’m living in Chester now, I train with a new group and I’ve got a new chair. If the Worlds hadn’t gone well I would have been pretty gutted, having made all those changes and not seen any improvement.

So it was a feeling of relief more than anything. 2018 was a really bad year and it made me question if I wanted to carry on competing. So I put everything into this year to see if I could still be the best in the world, and Dubai answered a lot of those questions for me!

I felt ready to finish the season after the 100m. I’d built it up so much knowing that it was going to be the hardest race of the season. As soon as it finished I was exhausted. Then it was a long four days until the 800m, which felt more like two weeks.

Watching everyone finish their competition, pack their chairs and equipment up, and having a bit of a holiday in Dubai, I was just waiting to race again and trying to remain in the right mind-set. My 800m was a good race, but mainly because I just wanted to get to the end of my season!

I feel confident that no one really has the time before Tokyo to do what I did and change everything to find those big improvements.

However, at the same time it does make me think ‘what if I’ve just shown all my cards at the wrong time?’ I know that everyone will go away and look for ways to close that gap – not just Kare Adenegan and Alexa Halko, the Japanese and Chinese girls weren’t there and will have been watching. So it makes you worry just a little bit!

I definitely think I can still improve. I only had six weeks in my new chair before the Worlds, so I was still getting used to that. And I only started making other changes about four months out, so if I can give myself that time again who knows how strong and fit I can be going into the Paralympics?

Away from the track, I was honoured recently to become an ambassador for the Danny Jones Defibrillator Fund.

My good friend Lizzie Jones set up the charity in memory of her husband Danny, who died of a heart condition whilst playing rugby league for Keighley Cougars in 2015. Lizzie is a fellow Halifax girl - we started meeting each other at events shortly after Danny died, and soon became friends.

When I was born I had two cardiac arrests and appreciate the importance of CPR and defibrillators. So I began supporting her with that and in September she asked me to become an ambassador.

I think what she’s doing is fantastic and it’s great to see all the money she is raising being put to good use and actually helping people. It’s something other sports are picking up on now too, so it’s a brilliant movement that Lizzie has created and a really important thing for people to be aware of.

It’s a real honour for her to want me to be involved in this incredible legacy that she’s created in Danny’s name. It’s nice to play a little part in that and help where I can.