The AW 2025 female Paralympic athlete writes about the challenges of coming off the back of a Paralympic year and the work that has gone into adding to her considerable collection of World Para Champs golds.
Last year was always going to be hard to follow. Boasting both the World Athletics Championships and the Paris Paralympics, 2024 was a season full of opportunities, challenges and the unique opportunity to complete the double in one year. Throw in a wedding and a honeymoon, the once-in-a-lifetime moments just kept coming.
So it should come as no surprise that I had a hard time motivating myself for the 2025 season. With the promise of another World Para Athletics Championship only confirmed last December, I had to pull myself back from the celebrations and plunge back into the harsh realities of winter training.
Due to post-pandemic disruption, we have seen three World Para Athletics Championships in three consecutive years, as well as other major championships still sticking to their original schedules. This summer, New Delhi marked the long-term end of high-pressure events, and all year I felt like I was counting down to a proper break from what has been a demanding cycle.
Carrot has been a year-round 400m offering for my T34 classification, which has not been on the World Championship schedule since 2015. 400m is probably my favorite event.
It was my first event when we got to India and I was relieved not to jump straight into my competitive Paralympics. I had time to check out my competition, the track, the call room and the crowd so I knew what to expect later.
When the race started, it was disappointing that there were only four girls on the starting line, including myself. I’m not sure why more didn’t come forward and it was disappointing to see our opportunity for an additional event on the Paralympic schedule removed as quickly as it was added.
However, this opportunity gave me the opportunity to compete and win three gold medals, bringing my World Championship gold medal tally to 19, and I enjoyed training for it all year.
However, my highlight of the entire championship was seeing my husband Nathan Maguire bring home a hard-fought bronze medal in the T54 1500m and watching on the track with his parents and coaches. Everyone hangs medals around my neck before the race starts, but as Nathan is just breaking into the podiums, he reminds me of the excitement that comes with success.
After the buzz of Paris and returning in front of 60,000 people, it was quite a contrast and disheartening to see no more than 500 sparsely filling a similarly sized stadium in India. I always hope that after the Paralympic year, the interest will continue to follow us, at least next year. When the championships were announced at the end of 2024, after the excitement of Paris had died down and he was moved to a city that was poorly selling tickets for the last athletics event; The Commonwealth Games in 2010, I think we were all worried that there wouldn’t be a good turnout.
While I understand the importance of taking Para Sport out of Europe for its global development, I hope this is another reminder to the organizers that they need to work harder to fill the stadiums and give us the crowds we deserve.
What lifted my spirits was the amount of support the team received online. It was such a boost to have people asking where they could watch and sending their congratulations and I can only hope that World Para Athletics saw those messages too and gave fans more opportunities to come and support us in the future.
The main focus for me this year was working on my push technique in the 800m to be smoother and get my arms up with each push. Changing your push technique is like changing your running form, it’s so deeply ingrained that it’s still a work in progress, but the work showed throughout the season. Having pushed my second fastest ever 800m in Switzerland in May, 1.45.87, I was proud of my push in India, where I broke 1.50.00 for the first time at a major championship. It gave me much needed confidence that the work we were doing this year was going in the right direction.
Now I’m looking forward to a year that I’ve never experienced in my career, a year without a major championship to offer. With my event not included in the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow next summer and no host having been announced for the European Para Athletics Championships, I find myself in a place of freedom.
I have seen 2026 coming for a long time, and most of that time I dreaded its arrival, but now I am optimistic that what is being offered to me is an opportunity to create. Instead of following the same plan, because we have something to prepare for, I can get stronger and I can spend the summer with family and friends for the first time in about 15 years. So you might not see me on the starting lines as much next year, but rest assured, I’ll be quietly laying the groundwork for Los Angeles 2028.
