Golden girl Hannah celebrates Rio achievements at Manchester parade
Monday 17 October 2016
Double Olympic gold medalist and Salford University student Hannah Russell will be celebrating her achievements in Rio at the Olympic homecoming parade in Manchester today.
Hannah, 20, who studies BSc (Hons) Sports Science, dazzled crowds in Rio last month when she raced to victory in two of her events.
The swimmer's games got off to a great start, where she won the S12 100m backstroke event with a world record time of 1:06.6 seconds.
Russell, who is partially-sighted, then went on to take home a bronze in the S13 100m freestyle, and won Gold in the 50m freestyle event.
Following the parade in Manchester today, Hannah will travel to London for a second day of celebrations that are due to be held in the capital. She will then attend a reception at Buckingham Palace later in the week.
Speaking to The Guardian following her appearance at Rio 2016, Hannah said that she is looking forward to resuming her studies at The University of Salford in January. She said:
“I’m really looking forward to going back. It will be a change for me, as I’ve just been purely focused on the training this year. It’ll be nice to have something else, to see my friends again. My uni friends will be going into their final year next year, and I’ll be starting from scratch again, getting used to new people on my course. I consider myself a social person, so it’ll be nice to mix with new people. I’m looking forward to studying again.
“Salford has been supportive and they’d always send me my work while I was away. If I was at a competition I’d always have the PowerPoint notes on my laptop. Going into this year especially, I had so much support from my tutor and all my course mates. They were just proud to see what I’ve achieved.”
You can watch an in depth interview with Hannah Russell, filmed at The University of Salford Sports Centre, below.
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