How two wheelchair racers became a Paralympic power couple

Wheelchair racers Hannah and Nathan talk about their lives together, hopes for Paris and the future

When they first met, he asked for her autograph – now they’re travelling together to compete in the Paralympics and getting married as soon as they’re back. Here, wheelchair racers Hannah Cockroft, 32, and Nathan Maguire, 27, talk about life as a Paralympic power couple, their hopes for Paris and beyond. 
Nathan Maguire has won multiple medals for wheelchair racing including silver in the 2020 Paralympics and gold in the 2022 Commonwealth Games. 
Until I was eight years old, I was just a normal kid. Growing up in Worsley, Manchester, I did pretty much everything a normal kid does. I played football, I ran, I did Beavers, I was very active. Then on October 26 2005, I had pins and needles in my feet when I was going to sleep. Everyone knows that pins and needles goes away – but through the night, it moved up my body and wherever it passed, I couldn’t feel anymore. The next morning, my parents rushed me to hospital. 
By then it had reached my mid chest and that’s where it has been ever since. I’m paralysed below that point. My immune system had attacked my spinal cord overnight because of a condition called transverse myelitis. It’s so rare: I’m a lucky one in 28 million people.
Many people think disability is the end of their lives whereas, for me, it’s the best thing that ever happened. Without it, I wouldn’t be representing my country in Paris, and I wouldn’t have met Hannah.
I was so young, it was probably more of an adjustment for my parents. Their little boy wasn’t the same anymore. I’m really proud of them for realising that this was me now, and I needed to get on with it. I was discharged on December 24 and by January 5 2006, I was playing wheelchair basketball. On my first day there, I learnt about the Paralympics and vowed I’d be a Paralympian. Sport was part of my rehabilitation and I loved it. It gave me independence. When you have a disability, a lot of people tell you to “slow down” or “be careful”, but on a basketball court or a racetrack, they’re saying, “smash into it” or “go as fast as you can!” There’s a big shift in how people treat you.
I first met Hannah just after the 2012 London Paralympics where she had won two gold medals for wheelchair racing. It was at a Youth Sport Trust talent day and she was the celebrity guest and I was one of the young athletes, the “rising talent”. I have a picture of me getting her autograph. For me, she was someone who’d already been and done what I wanted to do. 
After that, our paths crossed at events and training. Hannah’s training group would always go on really cool camps in places like Australia, so I’d keep tagging along. We were friends for about a year and a half before we got together. I remember asking her on a kind of date at the Trafford Centre, turning up in a shirt, all smart, and she was all sweaty and still in her training gear – we had different ideas about what our relationship would be. Hannah is my first relationship and being with her has never felt like effort. We just had fun and we’re very similar people. The fact that we share a common passion is a big thing. It’s really difficult to describe the dedication this takes to someone who’s not in sport. 
Being together has made us both better athletes. The days that Hannah doesn’t want to train, I’ll be saying, “come on, let’s go” and she does the same for me. We both have our coaching licences, so we constantly have a coaching eye on each other and analyse one another’s races. If one of us comes off the track after a bad race and says, “I don’t know what happened”, the other one will be able to say something like, “On the third push, you slipped”. We want to see each other do well. I’m almost more proud of Hannah when she does a good race than I am of myself when I do. 
Our home is a bungalow in Chester, but it’s not specially adapted. We’re both really independent and it means we can go on holidays to places without needing anything extra. During lockdown, we changed the entire house into a high-performance training facility. We built a full gym in the garage and changed the front bedroom into a roller room – like a treadmill for wheelchairs. Every single morning, we jumped on the rollers and trained next to each other.
I proposed to Hannah on holiday in Copenhagen, just after the Tokyo Paralympics in September 2021. I was so nervous. I’d carried the ring around in my pocket for the entire trip and only plucked up the courage to ask on the last day. I kind of just screamed, “WILLYOUMARRYME?” and she laughed in my face so I had to ask again. I’d love to have children one day, but it’s a bigger decision for Hannah with the changes to your body and impact on your sport so it’s obviously going to be dictated by her. I wouldn’t want her to lose anything.
My main aim in Paris is to make the finals. There will be eight men in the final start line and if you’re on it, anything can happen. I want to be in the mix, go as fast as I can and try my best to get there first. Hannah and I will be staying in separate rooms. The British team has male and female apartments. You’re asked to list three choices of who you want to share with and we always put each other at the very top and they always ignore it. It is odd when you say, “night night”, and disappear down the hall. Our wedding will be three weeks after we get back, in Halifax, where Hannah is from. It’ll be our own special homecoming celebration. I think if my eight-year-old self could see my life now, he’d implode.
Hannah Cockroft OBE has won multiple golds, including two in London 2012, three in Rio and two in Tokyo 
I had two heart attacks within 24 hours of being born. My mum had septicemia which had passed on to me very quickly. When my parents left the hospital with me, the doctors had told them they had no idea if I’d even live – my mum and dad just had to wait and see and do their best. I was left with multiple areas of brain damage and damage to nerve endings, and as I grew, I had deformed legs and feet and problems with fine motor skills. I struggle to chop food for example– luckily, Nathan does all the cooking and he’s a very, very good cook.
My parents insisted that I went to a mainstream school where I was always the only disabled child. I was never bullied, I had a massive group of friends and did well in class. I was that kid that did every single after-school club – I played violin in the orchestra, I was a Rainbow and a Brownie, I sang in choir, I swam, I had dance lessons. My parents had a rule that if my two brothers did something, I did it too. If they got a scooter for Christmas, so did I. 
The only thing that was different was PE. I was either struggling to do what the class was doing or else sitting and watching. There was nothing in between. When I was 12 though, my amazing PE teacher invited a local wheelchair basketball team in to do a demo. I had no idea that disability sport existed. That day changed my life. After sitting out all those PE sessions, I had a point to prove. Within a week, I was playing for the team and they introduced me to lots of other sports. At 15, I tried wheelchair racing and that was it. 
I don’t remember giving Nathan my autograph – and he didn’t even keep the autograph either! I do remember him tagging along to my training group – he was very persistent. He wore me down! He wasn’t my first relationship – I’d been out with another athlete for four years before him. All my boyfriends have had a disability. I think that’s just my comfort place, to be with someone who understands what life is like for someone with a disability. 
Nathan and I just get on so well. At home, he’s the cook and I do pretty much all the cleaning, tidying, hoovering, and I put the bins out. Nathan’s like a human tornado. Every room he goes in is turned upside down. We’re both very driven and he makes me laugh. I get stressed very quickly and Nathan is happy-go-lucky, relaxing to be around. He’ll say, “It’s fine! It’ll just work”, and it usually does. I call it “The Maguire luck”.
My hopes for Paris are very simple – I would like two gold medals. What I’m looking forward to most is the crowd. I really struggled at Tokyo without one [the Games took place during lockdown]. Ultimately, sport is entertainment and I can’t wait to be on that start line and hear the noise, with thousands of people waiting to see what we can do. Watching Nathan race will be terrifying though, I hate it. It’s so nerve-wracking as I know how much effort he has put into it and how much it means to him. I’d rather race every day than watch Nathan racing.
If I had one piece of advice for my younger self it would be, “don’t plan a wedding in a Paralympic year!” It’s a lot – but everything is ready now and I’ve got my dress, which I can’t discuss. I definitely want children but we need to get the timing right. I’m at the top of my game and don’t want to miss out, but it will definitely happen. I keep telling Nathan that he has to win Paralympic gold first – then I’ll take some time off.
Wake up: “Depending on our training schedule, if we’re able to, it’ll be 9am for me and 10am for Hannah. She can sleep for England,” says Nathan.
Breakfast: “Nathan will have Chocolate Weetabix – he has that before every single race too,” Hannah says. “I’ll usually have something like eggs or granola and yogurt – breakfast is the only meal I make myself.”
Training: About two to three intensive hours a day, including gym and in the chair on the track or the road where we’ll average 14 to 15 miles per session.
Free time: “Shopping – we both like spending money too much – going to the cinema, and walking Polly, the toy poodle I’ve had since I was 13. She was a gift under the Christmas tree,” Nathan reveals. “We love a crime drama like Line of Duty – we’ve just finished The Jetty,”, Hannah adds. “We also like really good reality TV  – not the Love Island kind, but The Great British Sewing Bee or Bake Off.”
Dinner: “If I ask Hannah what she wants me to make her, she’ll say spaghetti bolognese every time,” says Nathan. “For me it’s chicken tikka masala. We don’t need to eat huge quantities like some athletes – just normal amounts – because, in a chair, you’re using your arms, not your legs, so you don’t burn as many calories. “
Bed: 10.30 to11pm. We both love to sleep and easily get nine hours every single night.
As told to Anna Moore
Recommended