Jason Smyth's Paralympics blog: Final preparations and plans to skip the opening ceremony

Jason Smyth is a visually impaired sprinter from Derry, is officially the ‘fastest Paralympian on the planet.’ In this month's blog, he discusses his final preparations and why he's skipping the opening ceremony. 

Since the European Championships last month I’ve done a really solid training block - three hard weeks followed by an easier one. It was great to get back into that because my first race in the Paralympics is now less than a month away! After travelling and racing you just want to get back into that routine of quality training again and start racking up the numbers again in the gym and everything went very well.

Paralympics Ireland has given us three options of when we want to go to Brazil. Some of the team are going to a holding camp in Uberlandia beforehand but I’ve chosen to go straight to Rio with a group on August 31^st, the same day the athletes’ village opens. Uberlandia meant more travelling – three flights – which I personally find a real killer so it’s better for me to go straight from London to Rio.