Matt Slade - Paralympic Sprinter

Andrew Maclennan started coaching me at the end of 2003 and is still currently with me as we are working towards the IPC World Athletics Championships in the Netherlands in September 2006.  I had known Andrew for a few years before he started coaching me.  When I first noticed him he was training a lot of top athletes that I had got to know quite well through traveling to competitions. 

After seeing what Andrew was like and how he did his coaching we got together a year out from the 2004 Paralympics in Athens.  I  knew that Andrew was the right coach for me as we always got on well, and I enjoyed his style of coaching and as a coach he had what I was looking for, and I knew that with Andrew’s coaching I would be able to achieve what I was aiming towards.

In 2004 he helped me achieve one of my biggest goals of winning a gold medal in the 200m at the Paralympic Games in Athens.  After Athens in 2005 with Andrew’scoaching he help me achieve 2 gold medals at the CP-ISRA World Championships in Connecticut USA as well as reaching a new personal best in the 100m with a time of 11.98s Which was only 4 hundreds of a second of the world record which is 11.94s. 

In 2006 he helped me reach the first ever IPC World Athletics Indoor Championships which were held in Bollnas Sweden, There I had to compete in the 60m and 400m as these were the only events available, and although they were run indoors and I had never done these events before I still came away winning a silver and bronze medal.

I have now just qualified for the IPC World Athletics Championships in the Netherlands which are going to be held at the beginning of September 06 with Andrew’s support I qualified for the Worlds with several A standards. 

Matt Slade
Paralympic Sprinter