Northampton Paralympic champ aims to inspire other youngsters to get involved with sport

Paralympic gold medallist, Ellie Robinson has hosted a swimming masterclass at her school stomping ground and helped to share her sporting wisdom with a double amputee.

She might be waiting on her GCSE results, but that hasn't stopped Ellie Robinson from swapping advice with aspirational swimmers at Northampton High School sports enrichment day.

This year the public school invited about 125 year 4 girls from 13 primary schools to join Northampton High School pupils in a bid to encourage girls to have a love for a variety of sports, including tennis, rugby, athletics and netball.

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Ellie, who has achondroplasia - a common cause of dwarfism, swam with bilateral amputee, Logan from Thorpelands primary school.

She told of how it's important for her to be a good role model to youngsters like Logan.

She said: "With social media around there are so many photos of adults and young women and they are getting so many likes, followers and so many comments on their pages and it almost makes girls believe that they have to look like that and they should be looking like that if they want to be liked or if they want people to like them.

"I think with swimming you wear a swimming costume so much, it helps you to embrace who you are and get used to wearing it and it's a disability sport as well, I know I'm never going to look like those people who are posting those photos out there, I'm never going to have long and slender legs but I know that I embrace that and I think that it's so important to understand that it's okay not to."

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"In a way it's not a good thing to have slender legs, but it's not a bad thing, it's just a fact, some people have long legs, some people have short legs and it's nice because it teaches people that disability sport, they don't care, they achieve, they are happy with who they are."

Back in September 2016, Ellie clinched a gold medal in the S6 50m butterfly race in Rio Paralympics 2016 and is now setting her sights on Tokyo 2020 after making education her main priority this year.

"I've had quite a lot of setbacks, this year has been quite hard for me as I have had to sacrifice my swimming for my GSCEs - not too much - but Rio was the focus year," she said.

"This year is my school year, I think I have accepted that I am not going to be where my Rio times are because I set them when I was at my peak, I've learnt that it's on a four year cycle so the next time I will be peaking will be Tokyo 2020, if everything goes to plan.

"As long as I keep working and training hard, everything should be alright."

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