Charlotte Cox

I have always been very lucky to have such great support from my village and tonight the social club gave me party, Carol did some Greek food which was really good, Richard and Martin showed a video of what I had been doing, it included my 200m race and showed my village just how loud Mum and Dad can be at races!!

Big thank you for everybody from C&C who came especially my coaches Bryn and James who see enough of me at the best of times.

From all the Cox’s a big thank you to everybody who came and especially the club for putting this on for me. I will do my best in 2012 at the world games in The Azores.

Charlotte
XXX

This evening I went to the Cambridge News Community Awards 2011 at Downing College. We had a lovely reception and then went to the “The Howard Theatre” all the category winners were very deserving and had done very brave things.

I would like to send a big thank you to the Cambridge News readers for voting me the Young Achiever winner and to Anglia Ruskin for sponsoring this category, I am very lucky to have won an award for something I love doing – thank you to everybody.

Some pictures will be posted shortly

Went to Salisbury for a GB training Camp day for the IAADS – Team is being selected to go to the World Games in May 2012 at the Azores.

We had to do a full training session with very specific activities like press ups, running around cones, longjump, shot put and then race the 100m, 200m 400m or 800m (fortunately I did the 400). Had a good day which came at the end of a long but very rewarding season.

On the way home Dad stopped off at Stonehenge it was my first time to see it, Mum said last time she was there you could walk around the actual stones, maybe she helped put them up!!

Looking forward to next Saturday the Toft Party!

I have been back in training since I got home, and my first competition was on 17th July at Thames Valley for Special Olympics. It was nice to catch up with some of the other athletes who had been out to Athens and our Coach Tony.

I did two events:

Longjump – winning with a jump of 2.65
200m – Second with a time of 32.8

Pleased with my events and how they went.

Bye for now

Charlotte
XX

A big thank you to Jen and Gina for the great video’s. These will be part of my memories of the Athens Games. Also a big thank you to everybody who was involved with them.

I had a great time doing them and got to go to some really priviledged events:

Video No 1 – Cambridge and C&C Athletics Club

Video No 2 – Team Getting reading for Athens

Video No 3 – In Athens

Whilst the GB team headed home on the 5th, Mum and Dad wanted me to have a chance to see a little of Athens (other than an Athletics Stadium), so we stayed on, celebrated Dads birthday and I got to see the historical side of Athens.

Here are a few of my photos’s.

I have been so looking forward to today, having to wait so long to do my 200m has been hard, especially as most of the Athletics team have done their events – and won medals.

My 200m is at 11.40, I hadnt seen the family but I know they will be in the crowd and I am sure once the race starts I will hear Mum!. I am in lane 2 which being small gives me a slight advantage and so hopefully that will be good.

It was a fantastic race not just because I won a silver medal but more importably I got a PB with a time of 32.58seconds, Dad and Will said they have never seen me run so well. Everything went right from the start, the bend and then the final straight, I gave it my all and Bryn my coach will be really pleased with my run.

The Jamaican girl had a clear win with a time of 32.03, but the 2nd to 4th places were much tighter with 32.58 (me) 32.59 and 32.60. It went to a photo finish and fortunately for me I got 2nd – yippeeeeeee.

The 4 x 100 Relay – I led off giving the girls a really good start, then Hannah (who had won her 100M final) had a great leg, passing to Anne (who had to miss her 100m final due to injury) who mainitained the lead finally passing to Vicki (who came 2nd in the Pentathlon) brought it home to win in a time of 1:02 – We were really happy.

My longjump was at 10.00am, and as stardard you get 3 attempts. My first jump was actually my best with a season’s best of 2.75m, my second was a no jump and my third 2.54m.

My jump was enough to earn me a silver medal which I am really thrilled with and very happy, most unexpected but my coach James will be proud of me!

The winning jump was 2.90m (Venezuela) and the third place was 2.48m (Nepal).

Today was my first day at the Olympic Stadium it was amazing to be at such a venue. I didn’t have any events today so I was allowed to spend the morning with all my family. I hadn’t seen Mum and Dad for over a week so it was really good to see them and have a catch up.

We stayed at the stadium and supported the other team members, and went to see some of the other events Tennis, Basketball, Powerlifting, Swimming. Early afternoon I had to leave the stadium to get ready to go to the British Ambassador’s reception. It was formal but good fun, unfortunately not all of the team could go some are in hospital or in quarantine. I also got to interview Tim Shriver the International president of the Special Olympics and the son of Eunice Kennedy Shriver the founder of the Special Olympics movement (and sister of JFK) for the Coca Cola blog, he was really nice and made me feel really relaxed it was a fun interview to do.

Mr Shriver is much more experienced at doing this sort of thing than I am but he is such a warm person he quickly put me at ease and we got a really good interview which you can see on the You tube site:

It seems a long time ago that we were all sitting in the village social club raising funds to go to Athens and now the time has arrived. I’ve been packed for days and excited about going to Greece. In the build up to the weekend dad did an interview for Heart Radio in Peterborough earlier in the week and dad and I both did a telephone interview with Nick Fairbairn of BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.

We set off for Heathrow Terminal 1 at 2pm to meet the rest of the team at 5pm. We arrived in good time and immediately found the small contingent of athletes that had already arrived – the distinctive kit helped. We waited for all the team to arrive and then split into our regional travelling groups. We were issued with our games passes then we waited for boarding.

Mum, dad, Harriet and William left at about 5.30pm then we waited for our Aegeon Airways flight at 8.25pm. We were delayed taking off, finally departing at 9.05pm. Our flight arrived at 2.30am local time and then it was a four hour coach ride a two hour boat ride to the island of Skiathos – our home for the next four days.

We stay on the Mama Mia island of Skiathos until 24th June then we return to Athens for the competition.

You can follow what we are doing on you tube, as Coca Cola are doing 3 videos which are on you tube, here is the first