DAME Sarah Storey will return to a World Championships next week, a year after fearing her career could have been ended by a crash.

Storey, 45, will target an incredible 17th road para-cycling world title and 42nd overall at the combined UCI Cycling World Championships in Scotland as she competes in both the time trial and road race in Dumfries and Galloway with eyes on next summer’s Paralympics in Paris.

She still has no date in mind for when she might call it a day, but Storey admitted wondering if that decision might be taken out of her hands when she suffered a punctured lung, broken rib and concussion symptoms in a crash caused by a fellow rider’s “silly manoeuvre” at a race in Quebec, Canada last August.

“Absolutely, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think, ‘Oh my goodness’,” she said in recalling the incident. “You always hope it’s not going to be a crash that makes the decision for you. I was pretty shocked to discover that my lung was as damaged as it was…

“The return from that was really quite tricky. I don’t think I fully recovered probably until February this year because after the track worlds [in October], I got Covid and tonsillitis and then a horrendous chest infection and I didn’t train properly until a training camp in February.

“For me it was quite a long recovery and I don’t think I appreciated just how badly injured I was.”

Storey competed at her first Paralympics in 1992 when still a swimmer, a sport in which she took five Paralympic golds and six world titles before switching to two wheels in 2005.

Paris is in line to be her ninth Games, but asked if it would be her last, the 17-time Paralympic champion gave the well-rehearsed answer heard in the lead-up to both Rio and Tokyo.

“I don’t think the answer is going to change,” she said. “I won’t be making the decision until it’s kind of there, even before Paris and this time next year I’ll be focused entirely on Paris and the results of Paris will help me make a decision on what’s next…

“I don’t think I could ever make a decision before a race because I think if you do that, you’ve partially retired and I want to be full-gas right to the finish.”

Paris has been very much on Storey’s mind in the build-up to these World Championships. Scotland will debut the UCI’s new combined worlds, due to take place every four years,bringing together all the major disciplines bar cyclo-cross in a format Storey called the “most ambitious event” cycling has ever seen.

Para-cycling events will take place alongside the able-bodied racing, sharing the spotlight, but the condensed schedule has forced multi-discipline riders like Storey to make choices and she will forego the track to focus on the roads.