Who is Libby Clegg? Dancing on Ice 2020 contestant and Paralympic sprinter

Libby Clegg is one of the celebrities boldly stepping onto the rink for this year's series of Dancing On Ice.

The Paralympic sprinter is used to intense training, given her career in athletics, so fingers crossed she can overcome the nerves and impress the judges.

The show's first ever blind contestant, Libby is excited for the fresh challenge and will perform her first routine in Sunday night's show.

Here's everything you need to know about the star...

Libby is a Paralympic sprinter and gold and silver medallist.

She represented Great Britain at both the 2008 and 2012 Paralympics, twice winning silver in the T12 100m race. She then achieved even greater success at the Rio Paralympics in 2016, breaking two records to win gold in both the 100m T11 and 200m T11 races.

After her Paralympic victories, she was recognised with an MBE for her contributions to athletics and charity.

Libby suffers from Stargardt's Muscular Dystrophy, which severely reduces her peripheral vision in her left eye. She is legally registered as blind, but hasn't let this deter her from fulfilling her sporting ambitions.

After fellow Paralympian Will Bayley was injured on Strictly Come Dancing, British Athletics coach Paula Dunn expressed concerns about Libby competing on Dancing On Ice so close to the start of the next Paralympic Games in Tokyo this year.

Libby revealed: “Paula expressed it’s really not the best year to do it and I completely agree with her, but these opportunities don’t come around very often. I felt like if I didn’t take it I’d regret not doing it."

“I weighed up the options and it gives me an opportunity to get myself in front of a different audience and open other doors for me. I’ve got a son now so I need to think about financially making the most of situations.”​

Libby usually runs with a guide runner, but for Dancing On Ice she has been training with partner Mark Hanretty using a combination of touch and verbal communication.

"Basically it's like learning a different vocabulary to communicate," she said.

"I'm not as bad as I thought I was going to be, but it's not as easy as it looks. It's a lot harder than I thought it'd be, it's very technical."

This being said, Libby hopes that her lack of vision might actually give her an advantage in the competition, as she doesn’t get dizzy when spinning on the ice.

“I’m not going to be as bad as you think. I won’t be the first person out," she said.

Libby is engaged to Dan Powell, a fellow partially-sighted Paralympian who competes in Judo. He has also forayed into the world of reality television, and was the first blind person to compete on ITV's Ninja Warrior.

The couple welcomed their first child together, a son named Edward, in April 2019.

It is not yet clear whether Edward will inherit his father's blindness, (Libby's condition is recessive, so won't be passed on), but Libby has made clear that no diagnosis will restrict her son's life.

"If he does have a sight condition, it’s not that I would expect him to become a Paralympic champion or anything, but there are options," she said. "There are a lot of things you can do that people tend to restrict you and not think you can."

“He could go into anything. If he can’t see, we’re not going to treat him any differently anyway.”