TEENAGE Scottish sprinter Libby Clegg may settle down on her blocks at the Paralympic World Cup in Manchester today and recall the bullies who unwittingly steered her on to the athletics track seven years ago.
Feeling miserable because of beatings and abuse at school, she would run around the block to release frustration. Noting the benefits, her parents persuaded her to join an athletics club.
Clegg, who has a visual impairment, has proved a natural o
n the track, and after winning a silver medal in the 200 metres at the IPC World Championships, the 17-year-old has become the youngest athlete on UK Athletics World Class Podium Plan.
"I wasn't exactly the most confident person: I was quite shy and I used to get picked on," she revealed. "But my dad used to time me around the block, and it was a good way of releasing my anger."
Born with an inherited eye condition, Stargardt's macular dystropy, at nine she found reading difficult. After her eyesight quickly deteriorated - she has no central, but some peripheral vision, and can see no more than two metres - she moved to the Royal Blind School in Edinburgh, where her confidence soared. After linking up with a new guide runner and coach, Lincoln Asquith - a 4x100m silver medallist with England at the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh - she made a big breakthrough on the track.
"I had had one or two guide runners, but it didn't work out. As a guide runner you need to be the right height with a different leg stride, and with Lincoln everything clicked. He has made such a difference."
Last summer the Edinburgh Woollen Mill athlete cut more than a second from her 200m best, and was stunned to win 200m silver at the IPC event. But Clegg, who is also coached by Janice Eaglesham and Bob Moxley, has missed five months' training with a hip injury, and is not expecting too much from today's performances in the T12 100m and 200m at the Paralympic World Cup.
She hopes to make the Paralympics next year, but London 2012 is the goal. "That's the one I've got to do well in."
The full article contains 375 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
