AARON Moores’ dream Paralympic gold medal will be forever cherished by his nearest and dearest but the Trowbridge swimmer is keen to say a special ‘thank you’ to one particular member of his family.

Four years after winning S14 100m breaststroke silver at London 2012, the 22-year-old wrote his name in to the history books by securing a coveted gold in Brazil earlier this month, pipping Great Britain team-mate Scott Quin by just three hundredths of a second to top the podium.

The road to Rio had been far from straightforward for former Trowbridge ASC man Moores, who relocated to train at the Swansea Performance Centre and was forced to take up a part-time job to fund his training.

But having hit the gold standard, the Wiltshire star believes his decision to move to South Wales paid off in emphatic style and on Monday, Moores will be taking his grandmother Maria Hanko on holiday to thank her for all her support.

“I moved to Swansea about a year-and-a-half ago. It was hard because I wasn’t getting any funding then and my nan had to help me out a lot,” said Moores.

“She supported me so much so I wanted to take her on holiday to say thank you.

“We’re going to Hungary and she’s got family there, so I’m going to take her to see them.

“I wanted to win that gold medal and be able to come home and show it to her.

“I knew the coach from Swansea (Stuart McNarry) and he’d been trying to get me over there for a long time. I decided to do it in the end and I think it worked out really well.

“I live in a house with other swimmers. They helped me settle really quickly but I also had to work in Toys ‘R’ Us to help pay for things.

“I also managed to get a local butcher called (Gwrhyd) Mountain Meats to help me and they supported me a lot too.”

Moores was also delighted to hear that his thrilling victory over team-mate Quin made plenty of waves outside of the pool.

He added: “There was a lot of build-up before the race and people were saying that they were looking forward to us being against each other.

“There was so much adrenaline but it went when I got to the final 10 metres and it was all in my head then – I was knackered but I just thought ‘I’ve got to win that gold’ and I did it.

“When I won, the adrenaline all came back and it felt amazing.

“People were saying to me that it was one of the best races of the whole Paralympics and that was really nice to hear.

“It’s still all sinking in now and when you walk down the street, it kind of feels different.

“I went home to see my family and my friends took me out for dinner. It was like ‘come on mate, this is a treat for you’ and that was great.

“It feels amazing and it’s something that I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

“I worked so hard to make it happen and it’s great to do something after you’ve trained for so long for it.”