Ellie Challis hoping home comforts propel her to gold at World Para Swimming Championships
BySportsbeat
Updated 14/07/2023 at 16:44 GMT
Ellie Challis is confident familiarity can breed success at this year's World Para Swimming Championships and next summer's Paralympics. "I feel very ready to race and I am very excited for it," said Challis. "It is nice to be in Manchester and have my family be able to come. You don't get the excitement of travel, but my family gets to see me swim and that is more important to me."
Britain's Ellie Challis reacts after competing in the women's 50m backstroke S3 swimming heat at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games in the Tokyo Aquatics Centre in Tokyo on August 29, 2021. (Photo by Charly TRIBALLEAU / AFP) (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP v
Image credit: Eurosport
Swimming sensation Ellie Challis hopes familiar surroundings can spur her onto gold as she prepares for a whole host of firsts at her second Paralympic Games.
Challis was Great Britain's youngest Paralympic medallist in Tokyo two years ago when she clinched silver in the women's S3 50m backstroke and has gone from strength to strength since, winning world gold in Madeira last year as well as bringing home a further four silvers from Atlantic archipelago.
Challis will look to defend that title and more in Manchester next month before turning her attention to the Paris 2024 Paralympics.
It is a city with which she is well acquainted thanks to regular trips to visit the company that manufacture meningitis vaccines, the disease that caused Challis to have a quadruple amputation before she was two years old, and the Clacton star believes she could gain an extra edge from competing in places she knows better than most over the next 12 months.
"I feel very ready to race and I am very excited for it," said Challis. "It is nice to be in Manchester and have my family be able to come.
"You don't get the excitement of travel, but my family gets to see me swim and that is more important to me.
"Paris has kind of become a second home, my sponsor Sanofi is there, so I have had a couple of trips over there in the last year. To know I have that support in the country is nice.
"Gold, I don't know, but there will be a medal and hopefully two medals this time would be nice.
"Getting fourth [in the 100m freestyle] was not nice, I was not a fan, so I am hoping that fourth will become a medal."
Challis is now one of the names to beat in the S3 classification after a sparkling couple of years but plans to compete in just three events next summer instead of the packed schedule that awaits her in Manchester.
A reduced race schedule and no more driving lessons following a successful first-time pass this month means Challis will have plenty of time to prepare for a whole set of new experiences at Paris after a less than regular debut Games in Tokyo.
"I went to Tokyo, but it didn't feel real," added Challis, who also takes regular snowboarding lessons when she is not training in the pool.
"I remember I went to watch the athletics in 2012 and it was the most insane experience ever, it was crazy to watch the whole country come together to support these athletes.
"We had support, but we didn't have people there, we raced in an empty arena. Being in Paris, to have the crowd, hopefully my family there, and the other athletes in the village will be a different experience and I am quite excited about it because it is going to be a first experience all over again."
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