"The competition between the top teams is very fierce, anyone on a given day could win," she told insideworldparasport.

"On our day we could beat the top teams in the world, the Germans, Australians.

"It's just about making sure all the right strategies are in place on the right day and everyone is in the right mind set to play.

"Anything can happen, we're such a strong team at the moment.

"We are aiming for medals and the ultimate would be a gold but I think being such a young team for a lot of us it will be great just to make the squad.

"We'll see what happens from there but everyone believes the team can do really good things at London."

Hamer and the British women claimed a bronze medal last month in Nazareth, Israel, where they were competing for the European Championships, a result which she says was disappointing.

"We brought a lot of players who we had not played before," she said.

"We aimed for the final but we're still pleased to come away with a medal, it just wasn't the colour we hoped it would be.

"I didn't know how to feel, it is great to win a medal at a major international but we were winning bronzes a few years ago so we want to be improving on that.

"It was a bit hollow if I'm being honest."

Britain beat France 60-47 in the bronze medal match, but Hamer says that they were naïve in their semi final against the Netherlands, losing to a team they had already beaten earlier in the tournament.

"I think for a lot of us it is psychological and our mental toughness was our downfall," she says.

"We'd already beaten the Dutch once and none of us knew how to handle the pressure of being favourites in a semi final like that because none of us had ever been in a position to win a tournament like that before against a team we're so closely matched against.

"We need to work on our toughness.

"We've done it before we're a strong team, we are putting the effort in but maybe mentally we're not strong enough yet.

"We're a very young squad; we took seven junior players out to Israel so we have a lot of work to do experience wise.

"Six of us haven't been to the Paralympics before."

Conversely, she believes that the squad's youth will stand them in good stead for future Paralympic Games.


"Who is to say that with the experience we will get over the next five years or so what will happen at London or Rio?" she asks.

The British team will be undergoing their first training camp next weekend ahead of the Paralympics, and they will participate in further camps every month until the Games next summer.

Having just begun studying pharmaceuticals at university, life will be particularly hectic for Hamer, but she has no plans to put that on hold to focus on London 2012, preferring the busy schedule in the lead up to the Paralympic Games.

"I'm trying to juggle my studies and training, it's tiring," she said.

"I've got 16 hours of lectures a week and all the assignments to do but I prefer to be busy and have stuff to do rather than just stuck around.

"I feel better once I've gone and done something I like the challenge.

"Loughborough have a big sporting background so are used to having athletes and supporting them."

Hamer was set to pay a visit to the Lord's Taverners National Junior Wheelchair Basketball Finals this weekend in Stoke Mandeville.

The Lord's Taverners is the largest supplier of multi-sports wheelchairs in the UK, and gave Hamer her first wheelchair when she entered the sport, as well as helping the likes of wheelchair tennis stars Jordanne Whiley and Louise Hunt, wheelchair sprinter Mickey Bushell and wheelchair basketball player Joe Bestwick.

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


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