My best and worst moments with the USA’s David Brown

US world champion and world record holder David Brown heads to Germany this week for the penultimate Grand Prix of the 2016 IPC Athletics season, which takes place in Berlin on 16 and 17 July.

The visually impaired sprinter won 100m T11 gold at last year’s World Championships, but missed out on a medal in the 200m, finishing fourth. He confirmed his place in the US Paralympic team after securing a hat-trick of victories at the US Trials earlier this month.

Here he shares his best and worst moments:

My best moment

It was when the reality hit that my dream was coming true in London. We were walking in to the stadium, I was walking in with the team, and I heard the announcers say ‘The United States of America’.

Before, four years prior (at Beijing 2008), I was sitting in the stands watching. Now I was actually down there on the track doing it. This was my goal, and it was actually coming true. This was not a dream. I was actually slapping myself when I was walking out there, thinking ‘I can wake up now! This is actually happening, this is crazy.’

That was my first Games, I didn’t know what to expect, I was nervous, and I was seeing my dreams coming true in front of me. It was the first time I’d ever competed in front of a crowd like that, against international competition like that.

My worst moment

I would have to say the World Championships in Doha, in the 200m final. Everything was going great and then all of a sudden just went bad. I was the favourite to win and I ended up walking out with nothing. I hate that – not just that I was the favourite to win, but just because you don’t like losing. It hurt, it really did hurt, but I use that as motivation especially this year to be like ‘That is not going to happen again’.

I never feel cocky going in to any races and I never underestimate my opponents – Lucas Prado, Felipe Gomes, Ananias Shikongo from Namibia, Daniel Silva - all them are great competitors. Any time of day anything can happen – as you saw in Doha. That was the perfect example. I was confident but not cocky. So that happened and I was just like ‘Well, I can’t do anything now, I need to get back and start all over again so it won’t happen again.’

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Sport fans from around the world can now buy their Paralympic tickets for Rio 2016 from authorised ticket resellers (ATRs)

The IPC’s Global ATR is Jet Set Sports, and Rio 2016 tickets and packages can be purchased on the CoSport website.

Residents of Brazil can buy 2016 Paralympics tickets directly from the Rio 2016 website.

Visa International is the exclusive payment card and the official payment system for the Paralympic Games.