Christchurch's Will Stedman's one of the unsung heroes in New Zealand Athletics. He's a four-time Paralympic medallist, and about to head off his fourth Para World Athletics Champs in Paris; a dress rehearsal of sorts just over a year out from the Paralympics in the same city.
"It's going to be good getting used to the culture, language, how everything works, and it means next year when I go there, there won't be too many unknown.
"I'll know the feel of the place and can just focus on competing," he said.
Stedman burst onto the scene as a 16-year-old in Rio, winning bronze in both the 400m sprint and long jump. He backed that up with silver and bronze respectively. But in Paris next year, he wants gold and July's World Champs will be a good gauge of where he's at.
"I think everything's heading in the right direction, so I think it'll be great going overseas for the first time in a while to have some good competition.
"And just to see what I can do... because I think I have improved a lot in the last 18 months since Tokyo," he said.
His long-time coach, George Edwards, agrees and said data testing has allowed them to really hone in on his running when it comes to spend, length and strides.
"We've had big improvements (in his stride length) which is quite critical and quite a breakthrough which has made him faster overall," said Edwards.
Stedman, who has cerebral palsy is currently ranked number two in the world for 400m and number three in the world for long jump in his category T36. If his body and scheduling allows he'd like to continue competing in both, but isn't ruling out sticking to one discipline.
"We've got a few competitions lined up in Europe (around the World Champs), so we'll use this as a training run and if it goes well do similar next year and change things otherwise," he said.
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