Cheshire cyclist Dame Sarah Storey beats crash to take on her ninth Paralympics

Dame Sarah Storey has spoken to ITV Granada Reports Sports Correspondent Chris Hall about taking on her ninth Paralympic Games.

Whether it's becoming an astronaut, marrying into royalty or scoring the winning goal in the World Cup Final, living up to the wild imagination of our youth is nearly impossible.

But Dame Sarah Storey hasn't just lived out her childhood dream, she's surpassing it.

When we sat down with her, she revealed that she had worked out as young teenager that she could do eight Games if she carried on competing into her early forties.

Now 46, Dame Sarah is taking on her ninth stint at the Paralympic Games.

She told ITV Granada Reports: "My children, Louisa and Charlie, are a huge motivation.

"Coming back from the Tokyo Paralympics, where nobody could go with us because of the pandemic, Charlie, who watched it on TV, said 'I'd like to see you in person, mummy. You can't give up'.

"It's an incredible position to be in. It's also a motivation I didn't know I needed. When you start out as an athlete, your motivations are to find the best performances to work your way up the ladder.

"To try and be in the best shape possible to challenge for gold medals.

"But, when you add in that additional dimension of being a parent, your children are right there witnessing you attempting to be the best version of yourself physically, and mentally, day in, day out.

"So you maximize it while you still have the legs, the heart, the lungs and the mindset."

One of those lungs was left partially collapsed after a major crash in 2022, which also left Sarah with broken ribs and concussion.

But, rather than put her career in jeopardy, Sarah says it just gave her new ideas of how to evolve her training.

"Coming back from that crash, I picked up Covid, tonsillitis and the worst chest infection that I've ever had, which very nearly hospitalised me," she said.

"I got through the World Championships last year to win the rainbow stripes back, but I still wasn't fully back on it.

"I had to be aware that I was getting a little older and work out how do I adjust things? And now I'm finally starting to see numbers that I hadn't seen since 2015.

"And it's really, really exciting to think what could come."

What could come is a Parisian souvenir to put further strain on Dame Sarah's medal cabinet, which currently holds 28 Paralympic medals, including 17 golds, spanning 32 years.

It's a career which she hopes can bring lessons in longevity for women, either in professional or amateur sport.

"I was not very good at listening to my body as a teenager. I got chronic fatigue syndrome as a result of overtraining, and that taught me a lot," she says.

"As you get older, your recovery time changes. Your diet has to be adjusted. As a female athlete, you have to be very aware of making sure you have enough iron.

"And also that you do non-impact sport. I do cycling and, before that, I did swimming to maintain bone health.

"I work closely with Manchester Metropolitan University. I'm a visiting professor there, but I'm also working on some of their research projects to try and make sure that we learn from my experience to pass down to others.

"I'm hoping that we can pull together some research over the coming years that will help guide older athletes and make sure we can keep more women in sport for longer.

"Because, if you look at age groups, there are far fewer females competing in masters events, compared to males."

Not that moving from elite sport into the masters age group is in Sarah's sights yet. The obvious question about whether this could be her last Paralympics is swatted away as easily as a lazy end-of-summer fly.

"It's very exciting to think that, in four years time, we'll be heading into a games in Los Angeles," says Sarah.

"The last time they hosted the Olympics in Los Angeles, they tried to house the Paralympic Games in New York. Except they didn't house any of the wheelchair athletes. They came to Stoke Mandeville.

"So it's very exciting to think that this could be the first time they do it properly and equally.

"To be a part of that is a huge, huge draw. So I can't say that I haven't thought about Los Angeles.

"And, of course, we know that the games after that will be on the Gold Coast. So, who knows?"

This endlessly driven para-cyclist shows no sign of applying the brakes.