Simmonds in record-making mood again

ELEANOR Simmonds' star quality continues to shine brightly as the London 2012 Paralympic Games draw nearer.

For the second successive year, the 15-year-old double Paralympic champion set a world record in the opening event of the BT Paralympic World Cup swimming competition and confounded expectations.

It was one of four world records for Britain's swimmers, who are in the midst of heavy training as they target the International Paralympic Committee Swimming World Championships in Eindhoven in August.

Britain's swimmers won ten of the 12 events on the final day of the sixth edition of the BT Paralympic World Cup in Manchester, a day after the men's wheelchair basketball team won gold and the women finished fourth.

Simmonds, who won two gold medals at Beijing's Water Cube aged 13 to become Britain's youngest individual Paralympic champion, remains grounded and modest, without losing sight of her target.

The swimmer, who has achondroplasia (dwarfism) and moved from Walsall to Swansea to train under Billy Pye, said: "I'm just pressuring myself, I want to go faster. I don't know how I'm going to do at 2012 as it's two years away – I hope to be as good as I can be."