By Duncan Mackay
British Sports Internet Writer of the Year

Jessica_Gallagher_head_and_shouldersDecember 21 - Jessica Gallagher, the first Australian to win a medal in the Winter Paralympics, has predicted that she will win two medals at the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) World Athletics Championships in Christchurch next month.

Gallagher, who suffers from cone dystrophy which means she has only eight per cent central vision, is due to compete in the long jump and javelin in New Zealand.

She is confident of medals in each event.

"Hopefully gold...it's just a matter of getting the job done on the day," she said in an interview with Sydney Morning Herald.

Gallagher, a 24-year-old from Geelong, missed last year's athletics season to train and compete at the Paralympics in Vancouver where she won a bronze medal in the slalom after defying the odds.

"When I told the athletics coaches that I was going to attempt to be a skier, a lot of them said there was no way that I was going to be successful in such a short period of time," she said.

"But once I set myself a goal I know that I'm going to achieve it regardless of what anyone else says."

She hopes to add her Paralympic medal tally at London in 2012.

"No Australian athlete has ever won a medal at a Summer and Winter Games, and some people say I'm crazy for doing summer and winter [sports], but why not attempt it?" she said.

The javelin is a new event for visually-impaired women and Gallagher is confident of making an instant impression.

"After Beijing [in 2008] they dropped shot put and discus and added the javelin, so this is the first international meet where we've had javelin," she said.

Gallagher has been preparing for the new event by doing some training with Uwe Hohn, the East German who forced athletics officials to change the javelin after he threw more than 100 metres and began to threaten the safety of spectators.

"That helped a lot to have such an amazing coach teach me my very first lessons of how to throw a javelin," she said.

"It definitely helped me learn things a lot quicker."

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