An athlete’s life can often be a monotonous, even mundane existence; training every day at 7am, again at 1pm, breakfast on egg whites; lunch on chicken breasts; a warm up in the morning and a stretch down before bed; it’s hardly thrilling, and not as glamorous as we would be led to believe.

A lie in, a night out or a midday treat can be relegated to the ‘special occasion’ category for most sportsmen and women.  So when In The Winning Zone went to an Edinburgh coffee shop to meet Libby Clegg, one of Britain’s top medal hopes for the Beijing Paralympics, we felt it would be a shame to deny her request for a hot chocolate topped with whipped cream and marshmallows!

Libby, who has Stargardt’s Macular Dystrophy, causing her vision to be limited to the corner of her left eye, is a sprinter, who will certainly burn any added energy that a mug of coco will give.  And although she has only sprinted competitively for a couple of years, she has already won gold (100m and 200m) at the British Open and silver (200m) at the IPC (International Paralympic Committee) Athletics World Championships, meaning she is quite literally one of the fastest disabled athletes on the planet. 

We think her performances on the track certainly justify the occasional indulgence.  And what is sugar and fat anyway if not energy food?  After all, it is the least we could do to thank Libby and her mum, Moira (who was well behaved and had a cup of tea) for agreeing to talk about the amazing feats she has achieved at just 17 years-old. 

Of course, competing at such a level means that Libby has a demanding lifestyle, balancing her sport with school and family commitments.  She rarely has time to rest, as mum Moira points out.

“She works so hard.  She is shattered after her training, and then she has to do her homework.  I’ve seen her out in the snow, and in the rain.  She usually sleeps travelling to and from training.”

However the reason why Libby works so hard is what makes her so special.  She has a different perspective to many athletes, because she dedicates her life and her athletics career not only to winning races, but to the more holistic approach of personal triumph. 

“I would rather finish second or third and get a good time.  If I ran badly and came first, I would feel pretty rubbish.  I wouldn’t feel proud of myself.  I would rather come second and know that I have done my absolute best.  I just enjoy it.  I do it for myself.  I’m running not just to win, but to prove to people that anything is possible, and to increase the profile of disability sport.”

Just as she has a surprisingly fresh approach to sport, Libby is in many ways a person who forces you to think outside the box, beyond the realms of preconception.  For instance, though slightly built, she can obviously muster the power within her frame to outstrip almost any runner in the muscle-bound field of track sprinting.  In fact, little Libby prefers to race against mainstream athletes and men to give her more of a challenge. 

Similarly, though she occasionally displays the personality one would expect from a teenage girl – Libby freely admits to being stubborn in training and prone to temper tantrums before races – she is amazingly mature for such a young athlete.  So mature, in fact, that she says she has felt the need to dish out guidance and counselling to her guide runner (who, attached by a short tie, keeps Libby within her lane when racing) Lincoln Asquith, a 45 year-old Commonwealth Games veteran.

When competing at the IPC World Championships, Libby was disqualified from the 100m final, where she placed second and ran a PB, because Lincoln crossed the line before her, an obvious occupational hazard.  But rather than getting distraught, Libby took it on the chin.  The same could not be said of her more experienced partner.

“I just dealt with it.  But Lincoln was moaning (he was ‘devastated,’ interjects Moira), and I just told him: ‘It doesn’t matter.  I got a good time and I have run my fastest ever!’  I wasn’t telling him off for the disqualification.  I was saying big deal, we finished second anyway. We know that, the time is there.  I wasn’t bothered.”

As you may be able to tell, Libby is simply a young girl who wants to be independent, and do her own thing.  She is not worried about what others think or say, and she doesn’t let external factors get in the way of her own goals.  Like every athlete who wants to succeed, Libby knows that sometimes she has to be selfish.  Nothing and no-one, and we mean absolutely no-one, is to distract her from her race.

“I start my warm up at least an hour before, just so I can roll into it.  I like to prepare in my own time with no-one speaking to me, unless it’s important.  If someone starts pestering me about how I should be warming up, then I don’t like it.  Mum either gets it, my coach gets it, or Lincoln gets it.

 “The worst question is ‘how are you going to run this race?’ Don’t ask me!  I don’t know how I am going to run it, and if you start talking to me about it, it will wind me up!”

Moira points out that Libby, like many of us, is simply a creature of habit.  To upset her routine is an unnecessary hindrance.  After all, why change a winning formula?

“When Libby was in China they tried to make Lincoln run to her right.  But he has always run to Libby’s left.  She leans to the left because that’s where her sight is.  But she loses up to 5m in the 200m because of that.  If she ran with Lincoln on the right she would gain 5m, which would be half a second.  They tried it, they did have a go, but it didn’t work.”

“I didn’t feel comfortable doing it,” reiterates Libby.  “I felt like I was being pushed.  When Lincoln is on my left, and I can’t see anything except for him, I feel more controlled.  When he was running on the other side, I was all over the place, and I wasn’t running well because I didn’t trust him to keep me in the lane, and I ran slower.”

It is a reminder that as spectacular an athlete as she is, Libby is still dependent on others to help her achieve her goals.  But that is not unusual.  Ask any Olympian or world champion how they did it, and not one will fail to mention the support they have received from the people around them. 

The fact that Libby is so independent is certainly a reason for her success however, though Moira points out that although Libby is now very obviously a self-assured girl, it wasn’t always the case, and it has been the positive influence of sport that has changed her life.

“When she started school at four, she wouldn’t speak to anybody, and when she was diagnosed at 9, I saw the sadness in her, not accepting herself.  And now I look at her and see how confident she is.  And if she hadn’t started running, she wouldn’t be that person.”

Libby, who lives in Deepdale in the Scottish Borders, is only one of three visually impaired siblings in her family, so life has been challenging in the Clegg household, not least at meal-times, as both mum and daughter are quick to point out.  Yet attending a special school in Edinburgh has allowed Libby to grow eternally grateful for the gifts she has been given, despite her blindness. 

“I’ve never had any physical problems that have stood in my way.  The people in my school all have disabilities, but I wouldn’t say I’m different from the girl with cerebral palsy. We are all the same, we are all in the same squad, we all put in the same amount of effort.”

Libby Clegg may not be able to see as clearly as you and I, but her vision transcends the barriers of any physical disability.

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