Couple hope for gold at Paralympics weeks before they tie the knot

A couple have paused their wedding planning plans as the two of them set their sights on gold at the Paralympics games in Paris. Nathan Maguire, a former Liverpool John Moores student, brought back a silver medal from the universal relay in Tokyo three years ago.

The T54 wheelchair racer, from Salford, is currently in the French capital at his third set of games. This time round, he is hoping to make his mark in the 400m, 800m and 1500m races - the latter of which, he is the Commonwealth champion in.

When Nathan isn’t training or competing, he will be cheering on his fiancee, Hannah Cockroft as she hopes to add a medal to her collection in the 100m and 800m races. This will be the third time the two are at the Paralympics together - having both been in Rio in 2016 and Tokyo in 2020.

However, this time around, the two had to deal with the added pressure of planning a wedding. Their ceremony is set to take place three weeks after both aim for glory at Stade De France.

Nathan said: "I’m not doing the relay this time. Because it’s a universal relay and there are so many different aspects to that, with the male-female aspect as well. I’ll be passing on the baton to Hannah in the relay this time. It’s staying in the family so at least the medal stays around us, that’s quite nice.

"We bit off a bit more than we could chew, I think (with the wedding). It’s a bigger job than we expected. We’re getting married three weeks after the Paralympics Closing Ceremony so we’re trying to get everything sorted."

In between preparing their vows, the two have been training at Greenbank Sports Academy near Sefton Park, with Mark Palmer, the group’s sports development manager, telling the ECHO how proud he is of them.

He said: “Greenbank are proud of its history in developing disability sport at all levels and supporting local Paralympic athletes. It's amazing to see people who both train and work at Greenbank participate in the Paris Paralympics and we hope all of them achieve their own goals.”

Hannah, a 32-year-old MBE holder, suffered two heart attacks within the first 24 hours of her life. The first left her lifeless for 20 minutes and after the second, it was feared Hannah would not make it. As a result of the two, Hannah’s brain was permanently damaged in numerous areas causing mobility problems with her hips, feet and legs.

Whereas Nathan was paralysed from the waist down after a sudden case of Transverse Myelitis, aged just eight. As the son of athletic parents, he began wheelchair racing in 2014, debuting in that year's London Mini Marathon - his first taste of racing on a huge scale.

Since then he has been training at the Liverpool-based academy, where he is a board member, and can complete the 2.2-mile lap of the park in seven minutes 30 seconds. Nathan has previously said how many people think a disability “is the end of their lives”, whereas, for him, he said it was the “best thing that ever happened”.

Writing in the Telegraph he added: “Without it, I wouldn’t be representing my country in Paris, and I wouldn’t have met Hannah. I first met Hannah just after the 2012 London Paralympics where she had won two gold medals for wheelchair racing. It was at a Youth Sport Trust talent day and she was the celebrity guest and I was one of the young athletes, the “rising talent”.

“I have a picture of me getting her autograph. For me, she was someone who’d already been and done what I wanted to do. After that, our paths crossed at events and training. We were friends for about a year and a half before we got together.”

Click here to read more about the other athletes representing the UK from Greenbank Sports Academy.

The Paralympics is being shown extensively on Channel 4.