Dame Sarah Storey: Greatest individual sporting career of all time?

When Dame Sarah Storey took gold at this week’s time trial in Paris, it took her Paralympic medal tally to 29 - 18 of them gold.

Tomorrow (Fri 6th Sept) she is going for the road race and medal number 30 - and might be disappointed to walk away with anything less than gold again.

By achieving a medal at every single one of her NINE consecutive Paralympics, and only golds as a cyclist, is there an argument Dame Sarah Story moves to become one of greatest individual athletes of all sports of all time… ?

 It was four years ago in Tokyo, her record-breaking eighth games, that she set a new world record and took three golds, and with them the title of greatest British Paralympian of all time (previously held by swimmer Mike Kenny).

(A short video of my experience watching Sarah in action in Paris)

Admittedly I might be biased, as in my role supporting her as Greater Manchester’s Active Travel Commissioner, I get to see a little closer what she puts in across her various roles.

After Paris, I think there is an objective argument that these achievements in Paris make her possibly the greatest Paralympian of any nation, and not only that - but one of the greatest athletic careers of all time across all sport.

What is so astounding is to have competed consistently at the absolute highest level since she was 14 and took to the pool in Barcelona for her first medals, back then as a swimmer.

She’s now 46 - and has had two children - twice recovering from giving birth to get back to her best after switching to cycling in 2005 - and indeed reached even higher sporting levels.

Since Beijing in 2008, she has established herself as the best para-cyclist in the world, with four out of four golds at her home Games in London.

It’s a fact, she has only ever won gold medals at all of her five Paralympics as a cyclist.

Indeed, she was in contention for a place in the team pursuit for Team GB at the Olympics in London and won a World Cup medal with the team in Colombia in 2011 - only to be told on the journey home that she was no longer being considered for selection.

Her drive to be the best she can, and her pragmatic approach to this disappointment, tells you everything you need to know about her - utterly determined, laser focused, a thick-skinned ability to move on, not willing to take no for an answer and indeed a ‘no’ might be likely to result in the opposite effect….

As she said at the time of that disappointment about the Paralympics:-

‘’We don’t want patronising, we don’t want to be told we’re inspirational and amazing.

“We want to be told we are gritty and determined and we are athletes first.

“We want people just to see sport - we don’t want them to think ‘Oh, poor darlings, they’ve only got one arm or one leg, and look how well they are doing’. We don’t need that.”

She points out many forget - that Paralympics is an abbreviation for parallel Olympics - it means the two run alongside each other.

She has got better as she has got older; this year she’s been recording some of her highest ever ‘power’ ratings on the bike - the only concession to age being to drop the track events (having set another world record in the 3000m individual time trial in Tokyo) to focus on the road.

Like some other elite female sportswomen, Sarah found that becoming a mum added more to determination to carry on, not less: competing in front of 11-year-old Louisa and 6-year-old Charlie being the motivation she ‘did not know she needed’.

The way she celebrated in Paris - uncharacteristically jumping for joy with both arms aloft as she stepped onto the podium after she took the time trial by four seconds from France’s 19-year-old Paralympic poster girl Heidi Gaugain - showed just how much it meant to set a new world benchmark.

And this time - unlike the Covid-affected Games in Japan - to share the moment with her children and family, who are as much a part of her career as she is and with whom she makes all her decisions.

And as she told audiences in Channel 4’s intro film to the event yesterday: ‘With Charlie and Louisa there - it’s physically hard, but mentally easy’.

This year in Paris, it was characteristic that she did not mince her words about the course - at just 14.2km frankly too short for the highest elite event of the sport, especially in contrast to the men, and when the triathletes raced over a 20km cycling course (that alongside their swim and run).

She bided her time until she’d competed to make those points publicly, but make them she did - even though it would have been easier not to.

She is a shrewd communicator but also willing to says things other people might rather she not - the ‘uncomfortable truth’.

As she says about the Paralympics

‘’The part of the legacy that is really challenging is the legacy for society, the legacy for accessibility, for disabled people and how they can access their very best performance in whichever part of life they exist.’’

Those who know her well say one reason she's so successful athletically is that she is utterly prepared to put herself through extreme discomfort - ‘the wringer’.

The hillier, the longer, the harder, the wetter ... she does train in the Peak District after all!

In Tokyo she attributed her victory to her usual intense preparation including fully analysing and memorising the course which enabled her to descend at 80kmh without touching the brakes, and predicting how best to duck an overhang

(she told Desert Island discs she almost has a photographic memory).

In Paris, it was this prep and her perfect judgement of her own pace and how much she's got in the tank that saw her triumph, coming from seven seconds down at a misleading early split time (after just 5km and before the hills), to win by four seconds.

It is this grit - allied to her commitment, motivation, skill and dedication to perform at the highest elite level; that has enabled her to have medalled at every Games since 1992 - NINE consecutive Games. It is quite phenomenal - but also unprecedented.

There are athletes who have competed at more Olympic games - but none who’ve secured a medal at all of their appearances, not to mention nine of them, as Sarah has done.

Canadian equestrian athlete Ian Millar and Georgian sports shooter Nino Salukvadze hold the highest honour of having competed at ten Olympic games.

Millar won but one medal, a silver in Beijing in 2008 and Salukvadze - who appeared at a Paris aged 55 - won three, across two Games and none since 2008.

Austrian sailor Hubert Raudaschl and Latvian shooter Afanasijs Kuzmins (representing Soviet Union until 1988) have each made nine Olympic appearances - managing two medals each across those events.

In Paralympic sport - no active athlete has competed in more Games than Sarah - the closest active rival is Spain’s Teresa Perales who secured five medals at her first games in Sydney 2000 and made the podium in every Paralympics since, including Paris with a lone bronze in the T2 50m backstroke. But she started later than Sarah and is two years older so a sixth Games may be a stretch.

US swimmer Trischa Zorn is the most successful Paralympian ever in terms of medals, winning 55, 41 of them gold. But she competed at seven Paralympic Games and some of them before what is considered the modern era (1980 – 2004).

Zorn competed until she was 40 - across seven Paralympics, including the 1992 Games where a teenage Sarah Bailey made her debut albeit in different classes so the pair did not compete against each other.

So by my reckoning - Dame Sarah's medal in Paris lays down an unprecedented marker - the first athlete to take to the podium in nine consecutive Games, Olympic or Paralympic.

 An incredible feat.

It is a measure of her dedication as an athlete that she is once again favourite for the gold medal in Friday's road race, which will involve five laps of the same course.

Will she go for a tenth Games, by which time she'll be 50?

She's not being drawn on that yet - preferring to tell this morning's Radio 4 Today interviewer about her excitement at seeing the emergence of Gaugain, who cites Sarah as something of a hero despite doing all she could to take her idol's crown, riding at an average of more than 40kmph.

And to remind him and the Radio 4 audience that her season is not done yet - as she will betravelling to Zurich to defend her titles at the World Championships later this month.

Yet another measure of what a champion she is.

The Paralympic road race will be live from 0830 UK time on Channel 4 , Friday 6th September