Paralympic champion Anna Grimaldi: 'It is a new era of my career'

The sport that thrust Paralympian Anna Grimaldi into the spotlight is the same discipline that is taking such a toll on her body that she is switching focus from the field to the track.

Grimaldi won her first Paralympics long jump gold medal in a shock victory at the Rio 2016 Games, then she backed it up with gold again in the long jump at the Tokyo Games in 2021. But this year in Paris it was her sprinting that saw her get onto the Paralympic podium.

The Dunedin-based athlete was New Zealand's only gold medallist at the Paris Paralympics.

She won the T47 200-metre final, a race considered to be her third string event, hours after the devastation of narrowly missing out on a long jump medal. She also claimed a bronze medal in the 100m sprint.

"My focus was the long jump, and it always has been, that's my bread and butter and I think that was why it was so hard to swallow and a bit more of a shock to the system at it not going the way I had hoped and knew it could go."

In the short turnaround between the long jump and the 200m, Grimaldi turned to an unusual source of solace - social media.

"Being able to look online, which I know not a lot of people do, but I was really intrigued I'd gotten a few messages and they'd been incredibly positive and so I went on social media and had a look and I was just blown away, and I think it really helped me get back up for that 200m.

"I was really tired by the end of it and I just knew this was all I had to offer we knew it was going be a quick turnaround, but we wanted to put our foot in the ring and present a direction that we wanted our programme to go in for the next four years.

"For it to go so well was a shock but also I think me and my coach knew there was a bit of an opportunity to be able to do something special, we just didn't know how special."

After Paris, Grimaldi spent seven weeks "decompressing" and reflecting on the experience with her Australian boyfriend runner Jaryd Clifford, who also competed at the Paralympics.

"We went on holiday together and it was just great to have someone who got it and didn't mind rehashing every moment 5000 times, we both wanted to do that."

Grimaldi wanted to avoid the "rut" she felt she was in after the Paralympics in Tokyo and has eased herself back into training with group fitness classes, some cycling and a little bit of running.

"I feel like it is a new era of my career where I really love running, I'm good at running and I want to do more of it and I think that's a really exciting place to be in.

"I still feel like there is some unfinished business with the long jump I'm not really that happy with how I performed in Paris and is there more there I think probably yes, are we going to be able to find it? I don't know.

"The body needs time to recover from the long jump too. The long jump is a lot for my body I've been doing it for a while now and I think it's taking its toll so it's nice to have a bit of a breather."

Grimaldi is not in a rush to decide what happened next.

Having sprinting as her "new top event" would take some time to get used to and she would use the upcoming athletics season to figure it out.

One thing the 27-year-old would not have to work out was her own identity as an elite athlete.

"[The Rio gold medal] changed my life completely in sort of funny ways where it really challenged me personally about who I was and how I wanted to do things and my understanding of high performance sport and what being an athlete was like.

"I thought you had to be perfect all the time and it was about being switched on 100 percent of the time and I wasn't like that and I didn't function well like that

"Going into Tokyo I didn't realise that so I didn't really enjoy it I felt a lot of pressure I think I was scared of what it might mean if I didn't win and then when I did win the main emotion was relief.

"But it was really short lived because that wasn't the main reason I was feeling uncomfortable it wasn't that I wasn't good at the long jump it was more so other things about growing up with a disability, about how I saw myself, not really understanding what makes me tick and what makes me perform at my best and that's not necessarily being focused 100 percent of the time and being at home all the time it's about being a bit more free flowing and having the freedom to do a bit more of what I want to do and I think we found that this last cycle."

The domestic athletics season is across the Summer Circuit events - which span from Auckland to Dunedin between January and March - and Grimaldi said she planned to catch up with supporters who helped get her through the Paralympics there.