RADNAGE wheelchair basketball veteran Claire Griffiths admits she fell out of love with the game she has played all her life following London 2012.

The 36-year-old, who is originally from Wycombe,  will be going to her fifth Paralympic Games in September but after disappointment four years ago she doubted if she would make another Games.

Griffiths played in her first Paralympics 16 years ago as a 20-year-old fresh to the competitive environment of international sport and now, as an experienced veteran, she loves the game as much as she did all those years ago.

“I didn’t know that I would go to another Paralympics, I wanted to enjoy playing basketball,” she said.

“I had lost the love for the sport, not just through the experience in London itself but a period of time in playing it.

“A lot of things changed after London though and that brought back that enjoyment and we ended up at the World Championships two years later coming fifth, a best ever result for the squad.

“And we beat Australia in the process, who we’ve never beaten before ever in wheelchair basketball, to take the fifth spot.”

Griffiths is being sent to Rio by the British Paralympic Association, which is a registered charity that is responsible for funding, selecting, and managing the Paralympics GB team.

Rio 2016 is expected to be the most competitive Paralympic Games ever and Griffiths said the improvement in quality means expectations have to be managed ahead of the competition.

“You have to go point by point, so the first point is to make the quarter-finals,” she added.

“We have goals of where we want to finish in the group because then our next opponent is possibly more favourable, but you don’t know what happens in the other groups and what other teams do anyway.

“To make a semi-final at a global competition is the next target for us as a squad and that would be a first for our team – then once you get yourselves into a semi-final a medal is reality.”

With Griffiths’ Paralympic experience she has become a sounding board for the younger players in the squad, including 16-year-old Katie Morrow, and she said the youth around her has kept her young.

“I make comments about the year I started playing and things like that, they come back with ‘I wasn’t alive then’ or ‘you could be my mum’, but there’s respect in both directions and I think that it makes me want to succeed,” she said.

“We’ve got an environment where you are constantly trying to be quicker than the person next to you and when it’s the 16-year-old that beats you up the court you’re like ‘damn it’ and you’re trying go that bit faster.”

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