Hannah
Cockroft OBE, PLY, DL

Hannah Lucy Cockroft OBE, PLY, DL, is seven-time Paralympic Champion, and one of Britain’s best-known para-athletes.

Born on 30th July 1992, Hannah suffered two heart attacks within the first 24 hours of her life. These cardiac arrests left her with multiple areas of brain damage and a collapsed lung, with doctors questioning how the damage would affect her quality of life.

Yet, the problematic birth only helped in making Hannah a determined child. Raised alongside her brothers, Joshua and Daniel, she was never treated any differently to her able-bodied siblings. Hannah’s parents, Graham and Rachel, took every opportunity they could to get Hannah up onto her feet, strapping her into Kay-walkers, splints, twisters and standing frames. All this hard work resulted in Hannah taking her first steps aged three, in that moment deciding she wanted to become Prima Ballerina. Despite the seemingly unrealistic wish for a girl who could barely stand unaided, local dance school ‘Dance 4 All’ undertook the task, and through 17 years of dance lessons, concerts and awards, made Hannah an active and able individual.

Hannah was first introduced to para-sport at 12 years old, when the Cardinals wheelchair basketball team performed a demonstration at her secondary school. From this moment, she was hooked. Hannah played for the Cardinals for six years, whilst dipping into other sports through the club. At the 2007 School Games, run by the Youth Sports Trust, Hannah first witnessed wheelchair racing, whilst she competed for Yorkshire as a seated discus athlete. Invited to try out racing later that year at a British Athletics talent ID day, Dr Ian Thompson, husband of Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, put her in her first racing wheelchair and ran her through her first laps of the athletics track. The following year, Hannah stormed to victory at the 2008 School Games, this time as a wheelchair racer.

In 2009, Hannah moved on to train under the guidance of a new coach, Peter Eriksson. She trained hard after school and over the weekends, with her parents ferrying her to and from the track every day until in 2010, she found herself at a competition in Kirkby, Liverpool, breaking her first World Record in the T34 400m. Four weeks later, Hannah sat and finished her A-levels, became Prom Queen and broke seven more World Records in eight days, an incredible feat by anyone’s standards!

Hannah made her senior debut for Great Britain at 18 years old, representing her country at the World Championships in New Zealand in January 2011. Despite having only been competing for three years, Hannah became double World Champion, in the T34 100m and 200m.

The following summer, the world saw Hannah Cockroft line up at her debut Paralympics, the London 2012 Games. Cockroft took the world stage by storm, racing to victory over the T34 100m and 200m once again and setting two Paralympic Records in the process. Having become double Paralympic Champion on the home stage she was dubbed ‘Hurricane Hannah’ by the British media. An MBE followed in the 2013 New Years’ Honours.

Since then, Hannah’s lists of achievements have continued to grow and she is now the most decorated British athlete in World Championship history, with 16 World Champion titles to her name. Under coach Jenni Banks OAM, she repeated her Paralympic success in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, bringing home gold in the T34 100m, 400m and 800m, taking a new world record in the 400m and 3 games records in the process. Five years later, after a disrupted build up due to the Covid- 19 pandemic and many hours spent training in her garage, with reduced access to training facilities, Hannah lined up at the postponed Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. Here, at her third Paralympics, she brought home 2 further gold medals in the T34 100m and 800m, breaking her own World Record in the 100m and her own Paralympic record in the 800m. Hannah is currently the T34 World Record holder in the 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m and 1500m. She was named an OBE in the 2022 Queens New Years honours after her success in Tokyo.

Hannah completed the athletics ‘Grand Slam’ of medals when she represented Team England for the first time at the Commonwealth Games held in Birmingham in 2022. She brought home gold in the T34 100m in front of a roaring home crowd, completing the set of gold medals at every major athletics championships. Later that year, she moved coach to Paul Moseley of Leeds City AC.

Off the track, Hannah’s personality has seen her invited onto shows such as ‘The Great British Bake off’, ‘The Crystal Maze’ and ‘Sport Relief does Strictly Come Dancing’, which she won with her partner on the show, Pasha Pashkov.  Hannah presented a series of features for ‘BBC Countryfile’ in 2019 and has most recently reported on the FA Disability Cup, live on TNT Sport. Hannah made history by being nominated for the 2013 Sports Personality of the Year award; the first Paralympian ever to be nominated outside of a Paralympic year. Furthermore, she was named British Sportswoman of the Year by the Sports Journalist Association in 2017, being the first para-athlete to ever win the award in its 57-year history! Hannah was made a Deputy Lieutenant of West Yorkshire in 2016, being the youngest person to hold the title by over 30 years. 

Hannah has most recently returned from competing in the Para Athletics World Championships in Kobe, Japan, where she won gold in the T34 100m and 800m and silver as part of the Great Britain Universal Relay team. She has now been selected to represent Paralympics GB at the upcoming Paris 2024 Paralympic Games and is training towards retaining her titles for a fourth Games. 

APPEARANCES

Hannah is an accomplished speaker, with experiences ranging from school assemblies, to keynote speeches at corporate events. She has even given speeches at the House of Lords and in front of the Queen! Hannah has spoken for many clients, including, Ralph Lauren, BT, Muller, and Channel 4, covering topics such as accessibility, resilience, and marginal gains.

During 2020 and 2021, Hannah became accustomed to speaking and giving presentations and key note speeches via Zoom, Teams and Skype, adding remote motivational speaking to her abilities.

In the media, Hannah presented six features for BBC Countryfile in 2019, and has also appeared on many popular TV shows, such as, ‘Mastermind’, ‘8 out of 10 cats’ and ‘The Last Leg’.

Hannah is the host of the official ‘Paralympics GB podcast’, which can be listened to on all streaming services. 

For sponsorship, media and speaking enquiries, please get in touch!

TESTIMONIALS

BT:

“Hannah was brilliant. Her talk delivered above and beyond the brief, linking back to her own experiences and learnings that everyone can take inspiration from”.

Aldi:

“Your presentation was very inspiring to listen to and you covered really important topics that have got the business thinking about how we move forward in a more inclusive way for all.”

Sweaty Betty:

“Thank you for delivering such a brilliant talk to our team at Sweaty Betty. We have had such great feedback – people felt inspired by your story and really connected with the points you made around how we can all ‘perform at our best’ in our roles every day.”

Müller:

Efficio:

“By far the best guest speaker we’ve had”

Fizz Pop BANG!:

“Everybody, unanimously agreed that she was brilliant. She is such an inspiration, so great at articulating her incredible story, her message is so impactful and thought provoking and she’s also so cool and lovely to chat to! We really were so so grateful to have her there and she was a highlight for everyone.””