WORLD champion Stef Reid has joined the growing list of world-class athletes who will compete at the Muller Indoor Glasgow Grand Prix next month. Already confirmed are a host of World and Olympic medallists including Eilidh Doyle, Dina Asher-Smith, Dafne Schipers and Adam Gemili and Reid, who became world champion in the T44 long jump at the World Para-Athletics Championships in London last year, will compete in a para-60m on February the 25th.
Reid began her international career as a sprinter, winning bronze in the 200m at the Beijing Paralympics in 2008 before switching to the long jump, in which she has had considerable success.
Her outing in the 60m in Glasgow next month will be something of a return to her roots and the 33 year-old Scottish internationalist admits to being hugely excited about the challenge. “This is the year that I have the opportunity to experiment a little bit,” she said. “In 2016, we obviously had the Paralympics and then last year, we had the World Championships in London and everything was very focused towards those events so you do what you know works and you make sure you show up on the start-line healthy. Whereas in 2018, yes we have the European Championships which are really important but this is probably the last chance that I’ll have before Tokyo 2020 to try something different.”
Reid is not competing in the sprints just for fun though. Having been a long jumper for eight years now, the areas in which she can get better are becoming rarer and rarer but one thing in which she believes she can still find some improvements is her raw speed, hence her outing in the 60m.
“When I analyse the long-jump, the place I feel like I still have room to make some gains in my speed so we thought okay, let’s do some 60s,” she said. “I’m mindful that this isn’t my speciality but I’m taking it very seriously. But it is really fun because it is something different and that’s good – I’ve been jumping for a long time and it’s good to keep things fresh and challenge your mind and your body in different ways.”
Reid’s world championship gold last year was her first global title and she admits that it came at the perfect time to boost her motivation as she heads towards Tokyo 2020. “That gold medal was the accumulation of so many years of hard work and there’s never a guarantee that you’re going to win so it was nice to get that affirmation that the hard work does pay off,” she said.
“And it was nice to get the confirmation that I can still compete at the top level and I still belong here. I’m not ready to leave this sport yet – the evolution that para-sport is going through is fantastic and I don’t want to walk away from that and I definitely don’t want to watch Tokyo 2020 on the sidelines.”
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