Photography: Danny Evans
Grace Greenwood is a para athlete based in Jersey. She competes as a T35 sprinter, and during her time as a junior, she ranked 1st in Europe and in the top 3 internationally. Now 19 years old and a Senior, she places 14th in the world, and hopes to break into the top 8 for a chance of making the Paralympics. Outside of sprinting, she has a black belt in Karate, and trains alongside the GB Taekwondo squad.
Grace was born at only 26 weeks, during a getaway to Dublin. She joked “my parents and brother were visiting family in Ireland when I decided I did not want to miss out on the fun”. Due to her prematurity, the doctors only gave her a couple of hours to live, and after surviving the first few weeks Grace was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy (CP) and nystagmus, a visual impairment. She said “my CP affects all four limbs but mostly down my right side. It causes me mobility, balance and coordination challenges”.
Despite everything, Grace feels fortunate for all the good that life has given her. Her parents have been huge supporters of her, always trying to ensure that her disability has not been an obstacle. Her older brother always encouraged her to take part in sports, and Grace spent many a summer afternoon in Ireland being active with her cousins on her grandparents farm. Reminiscing on this, Grace said “we were always outside… chasing each other round and climbing on hay stacks. I was never allowed to not join in, which probably gave me that confidence to not feel different”.
She took up sprinting when she was 12 after visiting Jersey Spartans. She knew it was going to be a challenge to train with children in her age group, and fortunately Karen Le Motte was happy to train her one-on-one. Grace said “without Karen I cannot think I would have stayed with it. She was incredible giving me her time twice a week, and things quickly progressed”. She broke the CP Sport U14 100m record when she was 13, and was selected by Team England for the 2018 World Games in Barcelona. Her aim was to gain some experience competing and just try her best, and she recalls how small she felt being the youngest athlete there. She left the Games with a bronze medal in both the Senior 100m and 200m.
Since then she’s raced internationally for Great Britain on a number of occasions, and she was a Team SportsAid Futures athlete in both 2023 and 2024. She was also selected by Team England as a non-competing athlete at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham – where she was unable to take part due to there being no T35 CP race in the schedule. This was an amazing experience for Grace, staying in the Team England accommodation and having access to several events. Whilst she’d love to be a competitor in the Paralympics one day, she says she does not see this as something that defines her achievements. She said “sport has already given me so much and whilst I remain driven for more success I simply take each season as it comes, without getting too tied up with setting specific goals. There are just too many variable factors that can be outside of your control”. She added that what is important for her is spreading her goals across two different sports, as that helps her to “keep dreams alive”.
Aside from sprinting, Grace is an expert in martial arts. Her journey with the sport began when she took up karate as a student at Bel Royal school. During her time at the Waco Ryu club, she fell in love with martial arts, fitting regular sessions around her athletics training. Unfortunately, there is currently no CP classification in karate, meaning that there are no concessions for her disability when competing professionally. Whilst others may see this as a hindrance, Grace sees the bright side to her circumstance: “I liked it”, she said, “as it meant I was not singled out as different”. Last year she achieved her black belt under coach Ryan Lambotte, who said he has never seen anyone quite like Grace take to the sport. He said “she really is unique, and her determination and resilience is role model behaviour… she can do whatever she sets her mind to, and that’s an inspiration to able bodied and non-able bodied people”. After sending her black belt grading video to British Taekwondo – which does have a CP classification – she passed a trial in Manchester and was selected onto the GB Para Elite Poomsae Pathway. Since then, she’s trained every month in Manchester with the GB Taekwondo squad.
Grace’s philosophy is to not give up, and never let her disability get in the way of what she wants to do. She said “if I can’t do something in a typical way then I will find a different solution for doing it”. She has trained alongside some of her greatest inspirations, such as Commonwealth Games 100m champion Libby Breen and London 2012 Paralympian Sophia Warner. Both women are CP sprinters, and the latter’s condition is very similar to Grace’s. She added that “Cerebral Palsy covers such a wide range of disability, and whilst there are four classifications of CP in athletics, no two people are the same. The band width in even a single classification can be broad”. Grace hopes that in the future there will be more education around the range of impairment caused by CP, in both sport and general life.
