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Britain’s Hannah Cockroft set a new world record to win her fifth consecutive T34 100m title at the World Para-Athletics Championships as team-mate Kare Adenegan took silver.
Cockroft, now an 11-time world champion across all distances, clocked 16.77 seconds with Adenegan crossing the line in a new season’s best of 17.49 secs in Dubai.
Adenegan, 18, had set the previous world record – 16.80 secs – in beating Cockroft at the 2018 Anniversary Games.
“I don’t have any words,” Cockroft, 27, told BBC Sport.
“I’ve worked really hard this year on my start, knowing that it’s Kare’s strong point, so I had to make the weakest part of my race the strongest too.
“I’m so glad it has paid off.”
She added: “Sub-17 still felt like it was going to be next year’s goal. It still felt a little out of my league. I haven’t pushed that quick ever, so I’m not sure how I just did it.
“I think I had settled for silver in my head, so to come out on top, I actually got the medal I wanted.”
Elsewhere on day four of the championships, Hannah Taunton finished fifth in the women’s T20 1500m final on her British debut, while Ben Rowlings placed sixth in his T34 100m heat, missing out on a place in the final.
‘I changed a lot of my life’
Five-time Paralympic champion Cockroft now holds the world records for every T34 distance from 100m to 1500m.
But she admits she “fell out of love” with the sport in 2018, a year in which she also won 100m silver behind Adenegan at the European Championships in Berlin.
“I was really distracted last year, I’m not ashamed to say that I had fallen out of love with the sport a little bit,” she said.
“I didn’t really feel motivated to be at the European Championships, but Kare winning there was a real eye-opener for me, it really woke me up.
“To see her elation at winning, it made me realise maybe what I had lost. I didn’t enjoy winning anymore, I felt like I had to win.
“It really made me get my head down this winter, work hard, and I made a lot of changes.
“I moved out of Yorkshire, I moved to a new training group, I’m still with my coach but I changed a lot of my life to be the best athlete I can be.”
Adenegan, who took up the sport after watching Cockroft at the London 2012 Paralympics, told BBC Sport: “I came here thinking ‘what if I could be world champion?’, and I went into the race with that mindset.
“I said I was going to give it everything I have got, and whatever happens, I’ve got to be happy. Hannah was the better athlete today.
“I believe that you don’t lose, you learn. I’ve learned a lot from this race.
“Coming here as the world record holder, I did have some pressure. My world record has gone now, and that gives me motivation to work harder and try and get it back.”
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