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“This is the first time that I will speak about the next chapter,” Dame Sarah Storey says in a quiet corner of a busy cafe in Macclesfield as, after a remarkable career in which she won 74 world and Paralympic medals as the most successful British athlete, she prepares to announce her retirement from elite competition. It’s a seismic moment for Storey and for Paralympic sport but the 48-year-old is in a relaxed and cheerful mood.

“I’ve always shied away from the word ‘retirement’ because as an athlete you have to plan for the next chapter,” she says. “It certainly isn’t doing nothing and sitting with your feet up. I started planning for what life might look like as soon as I became an international athlete.

“My parents were always saying: ‘You need another string to your bow. You need to know what you might do if it all gets taken away from you.’ So I feel very fortunate to have got to the end and this is my decision. I also feel happy I can utilise everything I’ve learned over the last 35 years and put it into practice for the next 35 years.”

Beyond the 19 Paralympic gold medals she won as a swimmer and a cyclist across nine Games, Storey has become an impressive presence in public life. She has worked closely with Andy Burnham as the travel commissioner of Manchester and is the chair of Lancashire Cricket while working in sports television and remaining the most powerful voice of Paralympic sport in Britain.

Storey was such a force on her bike that, in 2012, she came close to making the dominant GB team pursuit squad at the London Olympics alongside riders such as Laura Kenny. That rare ability to move between Paralympic and Olympic sport, allied to her versatility off the bike, means Storey pauses when I ask what might be the ideal job for her in retirement from competition.

“That’s a really hard question,” she says with a wry smile. “It depends on the day of the week. Sometimes I’d like to be the chef de mission of the [Paralympic] team going to the Games. Other times I’d like to be the performance director of cycling or the anchor of the TV programme that showcases all these amazing things. I just can’t make my mind up. But then I’ve never been able to make my mind up, because I’ve done so many events across my life. So pinning me down for one thing now is probably a lost cause.”

Storey made her Paralympic debut as a 14-year-old swimmer at the Barcelona Games in 1992 and, apart from her three silver medals, she remembers: “I won gold in the 100m backstroke in a world record. A few days later I came back and won the 200m individual medley, but I did not even start my GCSEs until I came home from Barcelona. Four years later, I came home from Atlanta to start university.”

Storey won three gold medals and a silver in Atlanta, but: “I didn’t tell anyone what I’d done in the summer. I just said I’d been to America but [her fellow students] found out because I appeared on Noel’s House Party. So they’re all getting ready for a uni night out and there’s me and Mr Blobby and the now Lord Chris Holmes [the former Paralympic swimmer who became a Conservative peer in the House of Lords].

“I was cycling in what they call the Hot House feature. They put you in a ridiculous leotard and makeup and I had to race against Chris. He beat me marginally, but he always said that’s where my career in cycling started.

“So the way my uni mates found out about my sporting career is a kind of metaphor for how Para sport has evolved. Back then you could win three gold medals and be the most successful British Paralympian, and very few people knew who you were.”

How did her new friends react when they learned the truth about her supreme talent? “They said: ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ But it’s very difficult to bring up in conversation and say: ‘I was the most successful athlete in Atlanta.’”

During that same period Storey was turned away from training at an elite swimming club in Leeds because she was “disabled” as her left hand had failed to grow after being entangled in the umbilical cord when she was in the womb. “I’d gone to Leeds because of the club and I’d done my due diligence and thought they would accept me. And then the coach in charge changed his mind.”

She shakes her head at the memory. “They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, although it led to me having to coach myself, overtraining and ending up with chronic fatigue syndrome and four years of hell with my health. But it gave me a real empathy for other athletes. It effectively was RED syndrome, a relative energy deficiency. I was struggling to refuel, to sleep, to get the right balance of training.

“But I was still doing really well at university. I’ve since bumped into one of my lecturers and he said: ‘None of us have any idea how you managed what you did.’ But maybe that’s what helped me in the future to manage the juggle with [two] children and the challenges of needing energy in so many different areas.”

While public recognition of Storey’s achievements has grown considerably over the decades and she made the shortlist for BBC Sports Personality of the Year four times, is she disappointed that Paralympic sport remains consigned to the margins? “Yes, that’s the thing that we haven’t been able to crack.

“Lots of people have been surprised over the years when I’m selected again for the next Paralympics because they made this assumption I wasn’t racing. There is still a great need for us to address the years in between [Paralympic Games]. How do we make sure that not only do the organisers of those events have coverage in the first place and the coverage is of broadcastable quality? Having spoken at length to the likes of Channel 4, I know we need so much more investment.”

Storey explains: “One in four people have got some kind of disability or impairment. So it makes absolute sense to invest more. When we went to the Rio Games in 2016, the popularity of the Paralympics far surpassed everyone’s expectations. The local people said: ‘We really have an affinity with the Paralympians because they seem much more like us.’

“That’s not any criticism of the Olympics, but it was more to do with that cultural understanding and affinity of seeing someone who looks like you or has challenges like you.

“From a social perspective it makes sense to host both [para and non-disabled] events together in any sport, not just cycling. In the UK I’ve been advocating for combined national championships as we have that on the track, but not on the road.

“I’ve offered solutions in the past and maybe there’ll be opportunities now I’m not competing to share what I hope is wisdom. I’ve obviously got lots of things happening, but I’ve always been a multi-eventer.”

Storey switched from swimming to cycling in 2005 after a persistent ear infection meant she could no longer train in the pool. She spent the next 20 years proving she was even better on the bike. Storey smiles when I ask where she keeps her medals. “Most of them are hung up in the conservatory but all 30 Paralympic medals are in socks. My mum made a pouch for all the gold medals and she’s going to get round to the silver and bronze. But they’re still in their socks inside the pouches because I can’t bear to deal with holey socks.”

Storey points out that in Paris, two years ago, “I was nearly 47”, but she still overcame the searing challenge of the 19-year-old French star Heïdi Gaugain as she hunted down the teenager and outsprinted her to win the women’s C4-5 road race with unforgettable grit.

“I won by half a bike length. Someone sent me the photo-finish and said: ‘It wasn’t that close.’ Well, it felt close.” She had won by 7min 22sec at London 2012, and 3:29 in Rio. “There wasn’t a road race in my first games as a cyclist in Beijing. So I’ve done five in a row in the time trial and four in a row in the road race.”

Was she tempted to aim for a 10th Paralympics in Los Angeles? “Well, in two years I’ll be coming up to 51. For a while it made absolute sense to keep going, but having saddle surgery gave me that time to reflect on how do you stay fit and healthy if you can’t sit on a bike?

“That was probably the most impactful thing in my decision because even a couple of years ago I assumed I’d always ride a bike for hours on end. A gradual realisation that being able to leave the sport unbeaten at the Paralympic Games is something not everyone gets to do. Not to say I couldn’t go on and be unbeaten after Los Angeles, but I want to put my energy into something new.”

Apart from dealing with the machinations of county cricket administration and continuing “the really positive work” she did for so long with the imminent prime minister, as she and Burnham transformed travel in Manchester, Storey delights in her family. “Seeing the children develop and do new things in sport and art has been really exciting. My daughter’s got a new season with the English Youth Ballet. She and her brother are also both playing cricket and developing into really capable young athletes.

“Their opportunities are the most important thing. But there are also things to do within parasport and women’s sport. I can be more effective by not being the athlete and, instead, devoting some of that time to what needs doing.”

Storey takes a last sip of coffee and smiles before racing off to her next task. “We’ll see what the future holds, but whatever you do, it’s always about leaving something better than you found it. There are now more opportunities than ever to cross over into Olympic sport and more female athletes are able to work and train and be a mum. That wasn’t always an option, so I feel privileged to have been part of the cohort that showed it was possible.”