Olympics 2024: The female stars going for gold from West Midlands and Shropshire

Sophie Capewell

EVENT: Track Cycling

HOPES: Hope for a medal

You can completely understand why, for Sophie Capewell, competing in Paris 2024 might feel like destiny.

The 25-year-old sprinter was born into a family of cyclists. Her father, Nigel, was a coach at the local club in Lichfield and also competed in two Paralympics.

“I don’t think my parents intended us to ride bikes, but we couldn’t help ourselves,” Capewell wrote this week on the British Cycling website.

“All our lives, we were surrounded by people riding bikes. The people my dad coached were the people I looked up to. They were my inspiration.”

Capewell joined Lichfield Cycling Club as a youngster and tried his hand at a variety of disciplines, but always believed his future lay on the track.

First called up to Great Britain’s Olympic development squad aged 13, she won two medals at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games and earlier this year became national champion for the second time.

In Paris, she will compete alongside individual world champion Emma Finucane and Rio 2016 bronze medallist Katy Marchant in the team sprint, where they will be aiming to win GB’s first medal. After winning silver at the last two world championships, expectations were already high even before the trio won the Australian leg of this year’s World Cup. It represented the first gold medal for the GB women’s sprint squad since 2012 and they will head to Paris with the clear aim of finishing on the podium.

It’s a far cry from three years ago, when they failed to qualify for Tokyo. “We made a pact between all the girls on the team a few years ago that we wanted to change the narrative,” Capewell explained earlier this year.

“We realized we weren’t going to qualify for Tokyo in the team sprint. We decided we didn’t want that to happen again.

“We didn’t want to be the squad that was having to find different paths to qualify for an Olympics. We wanted to be a force.”

In that sense, it is a mission accomplished. However, for Capewell, the story is tinged with sadness. His father Nigel, who finished fourth at the Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000 Paralympics, died two years ago.

Capewell dedicated her two medals in Birmingham to her father and says his words of advice and encouragement will still be ringing in her ears when she takes to the track in Paris. “I feel really connected to my dad and I feel like I can share that with him in a weird way,” Capewell says.

“He left a legacy and was a pioneer in the way he approached things and I hope I can take that into the Games with me. My dad always told me to never just aim for bronze because that’s what he did and he came fourth. He instilled that in me, so we’re not aiming for third place, let’s put it that way!

“We’re just going to show up and do the best we can. Yes, there’s pressure, but there’s always been pressure.”

Freya Anderson

EVENT: Swimming relay

HOPES: Medal prospects

While 2024 may not have gone to plan for Freya Anderson, the Shropshire swimming star is still confident she can return from Paris with a medal or two.