By Mike Rowbottom

Katrina_Hart_2November 4 - England's gold medal-winning sprinter Katrina Hart has been named on a shortlist of five for the prestigious International Paralympic Committee athlete of the month award for October.


The 20-year-old features on the shortlist for her performance in sprinting to gold in the T37 100 metres at the Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games.

Hart, a sports performance student at the University of Bath, set a British record of 14.36sec to win England's first athletics gold medal of the Games.

"I'm really pleased to be on the shortlist," she said after this morning's announcement.

The winner of the award is decided by a public vote, which closes on Tuesday, November 9

Other athletes on the shortlist are Nigerian wheelchair table tennis player Kate Nwaka Oputa, Canadian shot putter Kyle Pettey, Australian wheelchair racer Kurt Fearnley and British wheelchair basketball player Dan Highcock.

Hart represented Great Britain at the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games, finishing seventh in the T37 100m final.

Just four days after her victory in Delhi she was back at her University of Bath training base with her sights set on further success at the IPC World Championships in New Zealand in January and then the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

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