'It's a dream come true' - Gordon wheelchair athlete Sammi Kinghorn thrilled at winning Commonwealth games medal

Kinghorn – a former world champion at 100m and 400m and ex-European champion at 100m, 400m and 800m – took bronze at the longer distance of 1,500m in a T53/T54 race in Birmingham last Thursday night.

“I came fifth in Glasgow as an 18-year-old, I came fourth on the Gold Coast, so I’m improving year on year,” the Gordon racer told the BBC.

“1,500m is not my event – you can see that it is not my event. I know in the draft I was just trying to recover as much as I could with no help from anyone else.

“I just tried to kick on but obviously I burned out a little bit in the home straight and got caught, but do you know what – a medal for Scotland, that’s a dream come true. Genuinely it’s a dream come true.

“I said to my dad that mistakes were made but he said ‘no, you fought to the line’ and that’s what I want. I don’t ever want to win easy.

“I want to fight every single race, and to win a bronze medal knowing I fought for it means a lot to me.

“My family mean the world to me and I’m so lucky that so many people managed to come down here and watch me.”

Former Earlston High School pupil Kinghorn, paralysed from the waist down after having her back crushed in a snow-clearing accident back in 2010, said she loved the atmosphere on race-day.

She added: “This crowd – obviously most of them are probably English – but they are absolutely getting behind the home nations.

“I could hear them when I started to accelerate down that back straight.

“I was like ‘come on, let’s do this’.

“My brother and his family will have been screaming watching me and I hope that I have done everyone as proud as I can.

“My mum and dad are my biggest inspirations. They have genuinely always told me that life can be very short or life can be very long, so why would you spend any time doing something you don’t enjoy? And I love this. I genuinely love this.”