Wednesday, 4 July 2012

Paralympic Athlete Highlight





Jon-Allan Butterworth (Great Britain)

 Sport: Cycling


Jon-Allan Butterworth joined the RAF in 2002 and served in Afghanistan in 2005 and Iraq in 2007 as a SAC(T) Weapons technician. During this tour of Iraq, he was involved in a rocket attack and was operated on by doctors in a battlefield hospital who carried out an above the elbow amputation of his left arm.

During 2008 he became involved with the Help for Heroes Big Battlefield Bike Ride, a 350 mile cycling challenge around the battlefields of Northern France to help raise funds to benefit other injured servicemen and women.

Following  this experience and watching British cyclists in the Beijing Olympic Games 2008 Jon-Allan attended a British Cycling Development Programme and was accepted onto the British Paracycling Programme in January 2009.

Aged 26-year-old from Sutton Coldfield,Jon-Allan made his international debut at the 2011 World Championships in Italy, winning gold in a world record time in the kilo event in his C5 category.

He retained his title at this year's World Championship in Los Angeles, again setting a world record.

At London Paralympic Games 2012, Jon-Allan will see his kilo event being factored. This means he will be going head-to-head for a Gold medal against his fellow GB team-mate Jody Cundy who will be competing in the C4 category. Only one of them can take the Gold medal - determined by which rider is closest to the world record for their class.

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