BEIJING 2008: Athlete heads to the Bird’s Nest

6:10am Saturday 23rd August 2008

PENKETH’S Gemma Prescott will compete in the discus and the shot put at the Paralympic Games.

The 24-year-old former Great Sankey High School pupil will compete in Beijing’s famous ‘Bird’s Nest’ stadium - the scene of Usain Bolt’s sensational 100m win - after making the international qualifying mark for both events.

Prescott has cerebral palsy and, although she qualified in the F32 wheelchair category, she will compete in a mixed disability field.

Her favoured discus takes place on September 9 with the shot put on September 14.

Prescott, who flies to Great Britain’s holding camp in Macau tomorrow, Sunday, before heading on to Beijing a week later, said: “It’s really surreal that I’m actually going. It’s just such a big opportunity when I stop and think that I’m actually going to the Paralympics.

“It’s very exciting and also a little bit scary. It will be an amazing experience and I don’t really know what to expect.”

Prescott, who attended Penketh Primary School, started her career at the Challenge Disability Club in Liverpool.

She took time out of athletics to complete a mathematics degree at the University of St Andrews in Scotland but took gold in the discus and silver in the shot put at the Cerebral Palsy World Games in the United States in 2005.

Competing in the Paralympics will fulfil a 10-year dream and Prescott now spends much of her time in Loughborough training at the university.

She said: “When I was at university, sport went on the backburner because I didn’t have time to do both but since then I’ve focused on the training.

“For the last four years I’ve just been really focused on Beijing.”