Hannah Cockroft knows the pressure will be on at the London 2017 World ParaAthletics Championships following Rio success

The wheels of the British Airways flight carrying back the majority of Britain’s Paralympians had barely touched down in London when Hannah Cockroft had already shifted the conversation to London 2017.

With gold on the track in the T34 100m, 400m and 800m, Cockroft was one of Britain’s five triple gold medallists and stars of the Paralympics.

But any suggestion that the 24-year-old might rest on her laurels in the post-Rio haze are wide of the mark.

Speaking at Heathrow before a connecting flight to Manchester, she said: “I know it sounds ridiculous having just landed back home, but London 2017 makes me want to get back out there training right away.

“The pressure is on now. The same girls from Rio will be there and they’ll be getting faster and faster over the course of the next year.

“Rio was tougher than London 2012 and London 2017 will be tougher still. I’m under no illusions about how much work there will be to do.”

That Cockroft sealed triple track gold in the space of a week is no mean feat. The hat-trick was clinched in the 800m, for her the hardest to win and also the most poignant.

The wheelchair on which she guided herself to that golden treble is named Tink, a constant reminder of a university friend — Tahlia Banks — who died from cystic fibrosis at the age of 20.

The night of the 800m final would have been the 22nd birthday of Banks, nicknamed Tinker Bell. It was a victory that never seemed in doubt in supposedly the weakest of her three disciplines. She took the lead from the gun, expected someone to come past her but they never did and she punched the air breathless in celebration at a third gold.

“I remember feeling relieved as I crossed the line and how tired I felt,” she recalled. “It has been a really long few weeks and I’m tired. But to have sealed that third gold is more than I could ever have wished for.”

Cockroft has the chance of going for the treble again, as the 100m, 400m and 800m are included on the London 2017 programme.

“I want to prove I’m the best in the world, that’s the motivation,” she adds. “That was the motivation for London 2012, the same in Rio and now it’s the same for London 2017. I like winning, that’s what drives me — and even more so in front of your home crowd.”

Cockroft has likened Rio to being a home from home, with the growing support of a Brazilian public that chanted her name at the end of her 800m race. It is a chant she would dearly love to be repeated next July.

For her, London is not just big personally for her but for the Paralympic movement as a whole.

“Quite often people only get the chance to see us every four years, but London 2017 is a reminder we’re still here,” she says.

“It’s not the case that we do stuff every four years, next year’s a really big deal for us, too.”

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