Campaign Ambassador - Martina Barber

Name: Martina Barber

Sports/Activities: Athletics

Locality: North Herts

My sporting journey began aged 12 where I started playing football outside of school next to the local athletics track, but the problem was that not many people were passing to me. It was then that I decided I would follow my sister and I joined the athletics club next door to where I was playing.

When I joined, Stevenage and North Herts Athletics Club (SNHAC) were so helpful to me. The coaches made sure I understood what I was doing. As I have a learning disability, they knew they needed to be really clear in their instructions, and this was important as it helped me learn what I needed to do to get better.

Along the way though, I did face barriers that made participating challenging. COVID-19 meant that I was not able to train and compete, and then I became unwell, which meant I had to stop training completely. I found this really hard as training brings structure to my life.

In 2015 I made the decision to specialise in long jump to see if I could make it to the Paralympics Games. It was scary as British Athletics was a very different system to the International Sports Federation for Persons with Intellectual Disability and it meant getting to know a lot of new people, but I was excited to be coached by some of the top athletics coaches. I have now competed in many competitions including competing for Great Britain and Northern Ireland on multiple occasions. A high point was the World Championships in London in 2017. I have always competed as a T20 athlete my entire life, but my body has changed over recent years and have just been classified as a T37 athlete, which opens new doors for competition for me. In the future, I am looking forward to putting even more focus on the 100m and long jump for the F38 classification.