Para athletics in numbers: Noelle Lenihan

Teenage thrower Noelle Lenihan lines up at the World Para Athletics Rieti Grand Prix in Italy this week – the three days of competition get underway on Thursday 18 May.

Here’s what the numbers reveal about Ireland’s young track and field star.

7 – Brought up in a sports-mad family – she has five sisters and one brother - Lenihan joined her local club in Cork at just seven years old.

38 – Lenihan competes in the F38 class for Para athletes with a co-ordination impairment.

2015 – The year when Lenihan made her senior international debut – competing at the Berlin Grand Prix in Germany.

18 – She may be still only 18-years-old now but Lenihan already has world and Paralympic medals to her name, as well as a

European title to defend this year at Berlin 2018.

9 – The F38 discus world record had stood for nine years before Lenihan added one centimetre at the Doha 2015 World Championships, throwing 31.64m in the second round to take silver behind F37 Para athlete Na Mi.

15 – Lenihan was only 15 years old when she broke her first world record in Qatar!

32.14 – The distance in metres that Lenihan threw to smash her own world record at the Grosseto European Championships – adding 50cm on to her previous best from Doha 2015.

4 – the number of major championship medals she has won – including Rio 2016 bronze, world silver in 2015 and 2017 and European gold in 2016. What colour can she add at August’s European Championships?