Jonnie Peacock is raring to make his return to competitive action for the first time since winning gold at London 2012, insisting he wants to run faster than ever before, ahead of the BT GreatCityGames in Manchester.
The 19-year-old will take part in the event in the city centre on Saturday – his first race since setting a new Paralympic Games record to win T44 100m gold in the Olympic Stadium last September.
World record holder Peacock then underwent an operation on a troublesome ankle injury, but is ready to return to the track with his sights set firmly on bettering his best-ever time of 10.85seconds.
Peacock, from Cambridge, is unsure how quickly he will run in Manchester at the weekend, but is targeting making his fastest ever time in the near future.
“I had a big ankle operation after London 2012 so my recovery has been a little bit prolonged from the Games because of that,” he revealed.
“I have only been training a few months now and we have done a bit of testing so we can tell roughly tell what kind of shape I am in, but we are not going to know for sure until race day.
“I get really annoyed with myself if I don’t see a PB on the clock. I want to go faster than I have ever gone before, no-one wants to go slower than they have gone so that is the goal – but we don’t know when that will come.
“We don’t know whether that will come at the end of the year, at the beginning of the year, or maybe even not at all this year.
“I have changed my training base and my coach so a lot has changed for me in a year and it is about settling in. This year we are going to look to do things but it is really about next year.”
World-class athletics returns to Manchester with the BT Great CityGames on Saturday 25 May.
Olympic and, for the first time, Paralympic champions will compete in the city centre and it’s free to watch.
BT has a long history of supporting Paralympic sport and is a partner of the British Paralympic Association all the way to 2016.
Image courtesy of Sportsbeat, via YouTube, with thanks
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