Hello, my name is Hannah and I am an Olympic athlete. I train and compete with the Special Olympics Surrey Athletics & Boccia teams.
Special Olympics is the 3rd Olympic movement and supports athletes aged from 8 to 80 with intellectual disabilities. It celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Special Olympics GB supports 27000 coaching sessions across 28 different sports every year. Every 4 years there is a chance to compete against other athletes from across all regions of the UK in the National Games. Last year the National Games were held in Sheffield and I was one of the 2600 athletes who competed over 4 days in 21 different sports. As my cover photo shows I did rather well, winning a Gold medal for Softball Throw, a Bronze medal for the 50m sprint and a 4th place ribbon for Javelin. The pinnacle of the Special Olympics is the World Games were athletes from across the globe compete against each other.
The next World Games takes place in March 2019 in Abu Dhabi. Following my success in Sheffield, I have been lucky enough to be offered the chance to represent Great Britain in the World Games next year. To put this in context I am one of 7 athletes from across the UK who have been chosen to be part of the GB athletics team.
To fund my trip to Abu Dhabi I need to raise £2500. To do this I will be taking part in The Surrey Hills Cyclone Cycling Sportive on the 26th of May. This is a 30 mile cycle around the Surrey Hills which includes almost 2000ft of climbing which I will be doing on my own bike and not the tandem.
If this was not enough of a challenge I will also be part of a crew on a dragon boat competing in a regatta on the River Thames in Kingston in July.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and I can assure you that I will be training extremely hard in the next 12 months with the aim of hopefully bringing back a medal.