Louise Sugden enjoying ‘good environment’, as Paralympics begin

As the Paralympics gets underway in Paris, Newbury’s Louise Sugden is fully focussed on her preparation.

The powerlifter arrived in France last week, keen to get settled in and continue her training ahead of her event on September 7th.

“We arrived on the 22nd and now we’re in prep camp”, she explained.

“It’s given us a really good environment to train, eat, get treatment from physios.

“We’ve just got all the experts around us at the moment and we’ll get into the best possible shape ahead of moving into the village at the end of the week.”

A seasoned competitor, Sugden explains that the Paralympics is an atmosphere like no other.

“It never gets old!”, she said.

“Just seeing all the buzz on social media.

“It feels like there's a lot more excitement for these games than there has been in the past.

“So it's nice to feel all that and to see all the support from home.”

Such interest will bring challenges too, as the Olympic crowds showed with their vocal support for competing athletes.

“Whether there's a French athlete or not, the crowds have been very, very loud, very supportive of other nations as well as their own”, Sugden said.

“I competed in London. I can’t imagine any crowd will be as loud as that!

“I've got a few people coming out, so we can always make a little bit of noise.

“You just have to use that, but not get overwhelmed by it, because it's very easy to get overwhelmed by the whole event as it is.”

Training is going well, with Sugden’s programme set to evolve over the next week or so as the event draws closer.

“In strength sports, it's a really fine balance between maintaining the strength that you've worked so hard for, without taking all the fatigue that you've got from training.

“So it becomes a lot of very specific work on technical, but very heavy single or double reps.

“In the next week or so, we’ll cut down all the extra stuff just to keep our bodies healthy.

“Then we can just focus on what we're here to do, and for me, that’s a single rep.

In the meantime, the camp is an enjoyable one, with Sugden sharing facilities with other athletes.

“We’ve got people from athletics, fencing, tennis.

“People are socialising, people are getting to know each other, playing games together.

“It's been a really, really nice environment, it's very relaxed, very chilled.

“And that's exactly what you want from the camp.

“You just want to be able to put in the work, but not get stressed and enjoy it, have a bit of fun time.”

Sugden’s Women's 79kg Final takes place on Saturday 7th September at 6pm British time.