Fin Graham heads to Paris experience and expectation after Tokyo breakthrough

Fin Graham might still only be 24 but he knows he is no longer the young pup of the ParalympicsGB cycling team.

Three years ago in Tokyo, Graham claimed a pair of silver medals in the individual pursuit C3 on the track and the C1-C3 road race.

Since then, he has transformed from an up-and-comer into a six-time world champion, and the Strathpeffer cyclist knows he arrives in Paris with a very different status.

He said: “I was the youngest in the squad for Tokyo, but there are a few riders who are younger than me this time around. I’m not the young pup anymore.

“When you look at the results that I had pre-Tokyo, going into it I had got one bronze medal in a World Championships. Since Tokyo, I’ve won six World Championships, European Championships, multiple World Cups and it’s really nice to see the hard work pay off. 

“It paid off in Tokyo, but I’m now pushing for a gold, more than I was. Sometimes that isn’t the case, but it’s really nice to be reaping the rewards from all the hard work that has been done. But I know the Paralympics is the one that everyone wants to win. So if you take your foot off the gas at all, people are waiting in the wings to try to take those top spots.”

If Graham wants to gauge where he stands on the global stage, he need not look much further than his own training base.

After all, it was ParalympicsGB’s Jaco van Gass who got the better of him in the individual pursuit, while Benjamin Watson edged him in the road race in another British one-two.

They are likely to be his biggest rivals once again in Paris, and with ParalympicsGB excelling in Tokyo - every cyclist on the team came home with a medal - Graham knows just what it means even to make it onto the team.

He said: “It’s a pretty outrageous statistic from the squad to be able to come away with that amount of medals. We know coming into this one that the riders around us are all the best at what we do. You know that to be on the squad is an achievement in itself. 

“It’s nice having that internal rivalry (with Van Gass) because you know in training, if you are not going as well, you can look over. If he’s flying, it gives you that extra motivation to dig a little bit deeper. We push each other on. 

“We’re the best two in the world going off the past couple of World Championships, we are the ones to beat and it’s nice having that in Manchester. We are always trying to up each other and make each other go quicker. Ben is the same on the road. We’ve got the two defending champions in the para disciplines. They are the ones I’ve got to beat in training.”