Wales’ fastest woman Hannah Brier gained one championship record and lost another on a historic weekend of athletics in Cardiff. The first record to fall at the Welsh Indoor Senior and Under-15 Athletics Championships was the number of competitors taking part.

Aled Davies has already set his sights on more world records next year after he completed a decade of dominance in the men’s F63 shot put at the World Para Athletics Championships in Paris with an incredible fifth gold medal.

Sabrina Fortune smashed the championship record to defend her World Para Athletics F20 shot put title in Paris.

Olivia Breen will be the first of Wales’ magnificent seven track and field stars to compete when the athletics schedule gets underway at the Tokyo Paralympics. The sprinter will take to the blocks in the early hours of Saturday morning when she lines up for the women’s T38 100m. The heats start at 2:38am UK time and should Breen qualify, she would line up for the final at a minute after noon the same day.

Three Welsh athletes have been named in the first group selected to represent Great Britain at the rescheduled 2020 Paralympics this summer. Reigning champions Hollie Arnold and Aled Davies are joined by Sabrina Fortune in the first wave of selections for Tokyo. Arnold, who won Commonwealth Games gold for Wales in 2018, will be looking to defend the title she won five years ago in Rio in the women’s F46 javelin.

Joe Brier and Piers Copleland put themselves in pole position for selection at next month’s European Indoor Championships with superb wins at Sunday’s Great Britain trial event in Manchester. Swansea Harrier Brier produced a magnificent new personal best and qualification standard of 46.81 to win the 400m A final.

Rebecca Chapman’s return to form continued on Friday night when the Commonwealth Games long jumper won a bronze medal at the Muller British Athletics Championships. On a cold and breezy evening at the Manchester Regional Arena, the Cardiff Athletics stalwart produced a second round jump of 6.14m which was good enough to claim third place behind Abigail Irozuru and champion Jazmin Sawyers. Chapman has struggled with illness and injures since winning a silver medal with a personal best of 6.54 at the 2017 British Championships and representing Wales at the Commonwealth Games the following year.

A teenage race-walker is organising his own para athletics meeting in Cardiff to give fellow disability athletes the opportunity to compete against each other. Daniel McKerlich, who competes in the T20 category for people with learning difficulties, has spotted a need for a competition in Wales exclusively for disabled athletes. The 19-year-old hopes his Para Athletics Event 2020 will attract some of Britain’s top para athletes as they prepare for the Tokyo Paralympics and go in search of qualifying standards.

Six Welsh para athletes have been named as part of British Athletics World Class Programme for 2020. Hollie Arnold, Olivia Breen, Aled Davies, Sabrina Fortune, Kyron Duke and Harri Jenkins all returned from last year’s World Para Athletics Championships in Dubai with medals. They are joined by 22 other athletes, including Hannah Cockroft and Jonnie Peacock, to be named as part of the Paralympic Podium group.

Sabrina Fortune dramatically claimed her first global title with the last throw of the F20 shot put competition at the World Para Athletics Championships on Thursday evening. The Deeside AC athlete made it a hat-trick of Welsh world titles at the Dubai championships so far as she followed in the footsteps of Aled Davies and Hollie Arnold, who both struck gold earlier in the week. Fortune produced her fantastic finale with a big personal best and championship record to snatch the title from the grasp of Ukraine’s Anastasiia Mysnyk.

Nowhere does Wales’ sporting claim to punch above its weight appear more justified than in Para Athletics. A total of seven Welsh athletes will be wearing Great Britain colours in Dubai when the World Para Athletics Championships starts in Dubai on Thursday. Owen Morgan spoke to one of them. Three reigning world champions boasting 15 global gold medals between them will lead a seven-strong contingent of Welsh athletes at this month’s World Para Athletics Championships in Dubai. Aled Davies, Hollie Arnold and Olivia Breen will be joined in the Great Britain team by WPA European Champions Sabrina Fortune and Harri Jenkins, along with Disability Sport Wales Para Academy athletes Kyron Duke and Jordan Howe.

As the months tick down to less than one year to go to next year’s Paralympics, Graham Thomas looks at the Welsh athletes who have already booked their places – and those striving to join them. Jim Roberts is rarely slow off the mark as one of the UK’s leading wheelchair rugby players and he has got there ahead of the rest when it comes to next year’s Paralympics. Welshpool-born Roberts became the first Welsh athlete to book his place for Tokyo next year as the countdown begins to the Games which are now just less than a year away.