There are 100 days to go until the Paralympics. And one of Britain's brightest gold medal hopes, sprinter Libby Clegg (pictured below), is in Manchester gearing up for the BT Paralympic World Cup, which gets underway in Manchester tomorrow.

With London 2012 reaching another milestone, the mind of the world champion T12 100 metres racer is firmly set on events taking place a few hundred miles south in just over three months' time.

"I would like to maintain my gold medal position in the 100m," the 22-year-old Cheshire-born athlete tells insideworldparasport of her London 2012 aspirations, having been asked about the Games for possibly the zillionth time.

"It is early on in the season at the moment and it is starting to feel quite close now, so it is quite exciting people are starting to talk about it. There is such real excitement at the moment, obviously with it being a home Games, and I hope I'll be running my best at the end of the season."

Clegg, third in the BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year Awards in 2008, also insists that she is "not too worried about it just yet," before hastily adding: "Ask me in a month or two and it might be a different answer!"

By then she hopes to pick up yet more medals from the World Cup, to add to her rapidly growing collection. She won gold at the IPC World Championships in Christchurch last year in the 100m, adding a bronze in the 200m.

"For the Paralympics and World Cup I just want to run fast, see where I'm at properly and then I'll get a better picture of where I am at before London."


Clegg wants to "better my 200m bronze from New Zealand as well... it's obviously quite a lot of pressure but I can pull it off hopefully."

She has crucial Paralympic experience from Beijing four years ago. Her silver medal means she knows what it will take to win a gold, while also ensuring that she does not have quite the same pressure heaped on her that swimmer Ellie Simmonds or wheelchair athlete David Weir are sure to experience.

Although she hopes to improve on her performance, she described the iconic Bird's Nest Stadium in Beijing as the best she has ever competed in. With 100 days to go until the Paralympics, Clegg says there is little point in trying to compete with or compare Britain with China.

"Obviously China are a really rich country," she says. "It's better not to compare it and just show what we have to offer as I do not think any country could outdo China's ceremonies and stadiums. It is going to be a different experience and I've been told every Paralympics is different."

Clegg was speaking to insideworldparasport from the sunnier climes of Alicante in Spain, where she has been warm-weather training ahead of the World Cup. The time in Spain has been spent finessing her running, but Clegg seems quite relaxed when told that the weather she will return to in Britain will be significantly colder than the 27-degrees heat she has spent the past week enjoying. Clegg went to Alicante having competed in the Olympic Stadium for the first time at the recent Paralympic athletics test event.

"My run was not too bad considering it's my first race of the season," she says of the experience of competing in the Olympic Park. "I was very close to my personal best time in my 100 so I was pretty happy with that."


Matters off the running track were also a concern for Clegg, though. "It was quite nice to compete there – it gives me a feel of what to expect from the Paralympic Games and it was good to go through and see how big the stadium is, find out where the toilets are, things like that!"

Clegg, who is registered blind, suffers from a deteriorating eye condition known as Stargardt's Macular Dystrophy disease. She was diagnosed at the age of nine, and it was from then that she got into Paralympic sport.

"I had always loved sports day and racing people," she recalls. "My mum took me along to my local running club and it took off from there. I had really nice club coaches, I just really enjoyed it and carried it on ever since, getting more serious at the years went on.

"I did not really realise until I was 16 that I could start actually running and being at the top of the world really. I did not realise until then how good I actually was. I have had a lot of things I have had to work on over the years so I've done a lot of training and I hope it pays off in London."

Just 100 days to go now to find out, then...

Watch Road to London 2012:That Paralympic Show, Saturdays at 1:20pm on Channel 4. Channel 4 is the host broadcaster for the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

David Gold is a reporter for insideworldparasport. You can follow him on twitter here.