Golden girl Colette on track for 2014 Games after latest victory

Sep 17 2008 by Andrew Weston, Wishaw Press

RACE ace Colette Martin continued to show her great potential last Saturday at the Fresh ‘n' Lo Great Scottish Run.

The disabled athlete slashed more than a minute off her personal best time in the 3km event in Glasgow Green that set her on the way to victory.

Last year the Motherwell girl raced through the finish line in a time of 13 minutes 18 seconds.

But this time Colette, 14, won the event in a brilliant time of 11 minutes 55 seconds.

The victory completed a superb run of success for her this summer.

As reported in the Wishaw Press back in May, the Taylor High pupil won the wheelchair event in the Women’s 10km in Glasgow and then scooped three golds at the National Junior Championships.

And she has now followed that up by winning three more golds at the DSE (Disabled Sports Events) Championships in July in the 100m, 200m and 400m events before winning the 100m at The Wishaw Games last month.

And earlier this month she competed against girls from all over the country at the UK School Games where a new personal best time in the under-17 100m race saw her return home with a silver medal.

Colette – who was born with the birth defect spina bifida – joined Red Star Athletics Club in Glasgow at the age of nine and began training with coach Ian Mirfin who has overseen the success of Carluke Paralympian Karen Lewis.

Proud mum Karen believes it is down to all the hard work her daughter puts in that has enabled her to be so successful in what is still very much a fledgling career.

She said: “As every year goes by she gets better and better.

“Before she used to only train twice a week but now she is training five to six times a week and that is benefiting her in the long run.

“Hopefully next year she will knock more seconds off her best times.”

She continued: “Because she is still quite young she is progressing all the time and she is nowhere near her peak.

“It is probably a few years before she gets to her peak.”

Colette, who has been glued to the Paralympics and the Olympics Games coverage on television, will compete in more events next year as she continues her rapid rise to success.

She is a member of the Scottish Disability Sports Academy – which supports athletes by providing expert coaching and funding – and her long-term aim, like so many budding athletes in Scotland is to compete in front of a home crowd at the 2014 Commonwealth Games that will be held in Glasgow.