Inspirational Diversity Champion of the month – January 2021

World Braille Day is on 4 January and with that in mind we have chosen Libby Clegg as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.

Libby is a champion Paralympian athlete who has a deteriorating eye condition known as Stargardt’s Macular Dystrophy disease giving her only slight peripheral vision in her left eye and she is registered blind.

Formerly a keen ballet dancer, Libby took up athletics aged 10, first competing in middle distance and cross country running before taking up sprinting, she burst onto the international scene aged 16 at the 2006 World Championships in Assen, the Netherlands, when she won a silver medal in the T12 200m.

Libby made her Paralympic debut in Beijing in 2008, winning a silver medal in the T12 100m. Later that year, she was awarded third place in the BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year.  At London 2012, Libby won her T12 100m heat in a world record time of 12.17 seconds to qualify for the semi-finals and in the final, she ran a time of 12.13 to set a new personal best and take the silver medal.

Crowned Commonwealth Champion in 2014, Libby had to miss a number of major competitions through illness and injury. She was reclassified as a T11 sprinter in 2016 and went on to set a world record in the T11 200m at July’s IPC Athletics Grand Prix Final. Libby began working with guide runner Chris Clarke in February 2016 and the pair claimed T11 100m and 200m gold at Rio 2016.

In April 2019 Libby and her partner Dan Powell became parents to son Edward, however she was training by the summer, competing at the World Championships later that year.

In 2017 she was awarded an MBE for services to athletics and charity and has been awarded Scottish Athletics Athlete of the year a record seven times.

Libby is an Ambassador for Guide Dogs for the Blind and has her own guide dog Hattie and helps to support them by raising issues in the media.

To find out more about World Braille Day see here https://brailleworks.com/what-is-world-braille-day/ To find out more about Libby see here https://www.paralympic.org/libby-clegg

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