Hannah Cockroft becomes four-time Paralympic champion at Paris 2024

By James Toney in Paris

It's Hannah Cockroft again, with a telescope needed to see the rest.

They don't nickname Britain's greatest ever wheelchair racer ‘Hurricane’ without good reason - she doesn't just beat her rivals but ruthlessly blows them into a different arrondissement.

It's hard to think of a track and field event - Olympic or Paralympic - as dominated by one individual as the T38 100m, Cockroft now a four-time champion.

Of the 549 medals awarded at these Paralympic Games, the girl from Halifax is the one number banker, the surest of things that means the real question is not if she'll win but by how much.

She duly flashed across the line a good five metres ahead of her nearest rival, team-mate Kare Adenegan, the result secure after a flying start left rivals once again in her slipstream.

Since her breakthrough at London 2012 she's lost just one major final and although her 16.30 secs winning time was nearly half a second slower than her world record, it was still nearly a second quicker than the silver medallist.

Her four wins in this event boast a remarkable combined margin of a three and half seconds, dominance not even doing justice to just how good she is.

She magnanimously insists the rest of the world are catching up though on this evidence they've plenty of work to do.

“I’m making my life well hard doing this," said Cockroft.

"You know you are the person people are watching but that’s what keeps you going, you don’t want to let them down and I know I have more in me too.

"My time wasn’t amazing but it doesn’t matter. This was the scary one. In my head, I always overestimate Kare and that’s not a bad thing. It means so much to hold on for a fourth Paralympics, not a lot of people do that.

"I’m 32 now, which everyone keeps telling me is old. I’d love to get another Games in and I can definitely get quicker. I’m going to break 16 seconds before I’m done.

“The standard is increasing massively, there are so many new girls on the line and they are all coming for me."

Cockroft doesn't know what it's like to lose, this was her seventh gold medal from four Games and she'll start favourite for the 800m later this week too.

"What can you do?" admitted Adenegan. "She's great an amazing athlete but you just have to keep working harder to close the gap. You could get frustrated but she’s an inspiration.”

National Lottery players raise more than £30million a week for Good Causes including vital funding into sport – from grassroots to elite. To find out more visit: www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk