Leading Welsh bioscience company, Penn Pharma, has become the first commercial sponsor of eleven-time Olympic gold medallist, David Roberts CBE. Penn decided to sponsor the Paralympian following an informal meeting where Penn CEO, Peter George, got to know one of Wales’ most successful athletes.

Penn will be sponsoring all of David’s travel, currently unable to drive, David catches the train daily from Cardiff to his swimming training in Swansea, all these costs will be covered by the sponsorship. Penn are also paying for driving lessons for David and have given him a brand new car to help him get to his training sessions.

David, who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at the age of 11 was encouraged to participate in swimming activities as a form of physical therapy, from there he went on to his first major competition for Great Britain at the 1999 European Disabled swimming Championships in Braunschweig, Germany where he won all four of his races. He competed in his first Paralympic Games in Sydney in the summer of 2000 where he won an impressive haul of seven medals.

Peter George said: "Meeting David was really inspirational. Just spending a couple of hours with him made me realise that he is very humble and competes for sponsorship and recognition among other able bodies athletes. The man has won eleven gold medals, four of those at last years Beijing Paralympics but he still remains grounded. David will support Penn through motivational speaking seminars and being the inspiration behind Penn’s quality improvement programme ‘Going for Gold’

"We are really pleased to be able to sponsor David with his travel arrangements as well as giving him a notebook computer to log on and update his drugs tester on his location and training patterns."

David said: "Penn are really supportive, they have already helped me out with my train tickets and are patiently putting me through driving lessons so that I can drive my new car to training instead of catching the train everywhere!"