Jessica Lewis concedes the fear of regret was the driving force behind changing coaches as she aims to gain ground on the world’s best wheelchair sprinters.

In advance of this weekend’s World Para Athletics Championships in Paris, the 30-year-old accepted the chance to work under the guidance of Geoff Harris, who represented Canada in the 800 metres at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

While Lewis admits the decision to move on from her former coach of five years, Curtis Thom, the son of her mentor Ken Thom, who died six years ago, came with a heavy heart, she believes the opportunity was just too strong to turn down.

“Obviously, there’s been a big change with working under a new coach, but I’ve been really excited to jump straight in to new training methods and ideas,” Lewis said.

“It was an incredibly difficult decision. I will always be incredibly grateful to Curtis and all of the Thom family because they have been so supportive to me throughout my career.

“When the opportunity came up to work with Geoff, it was just something I couldn’t pass up and myself and Curtis both agreed I had to take up the offer.

“I’ll be given access to more resources, more technology for training and new ideas that can implemented in my training.”

Despite enjoying success throughout her career, Lewis admits the anguish of narrowly missing out on major honours when finishing fourth at both the Paralympic Games in Tokyo in 2020 and at the World Championships in Dubai in 2019, gave her greater incentive to overhaul the likes of Chinese duo Gao Fang and Zhou Hongzhuan, Great Britain’s Samantha Kinghorn and Switzerland’s Catherine Derbrunner.

“I’m at the stage where I need to close that gap,” added Lewis, who competes in the T53 classification.

“I couldn’t live with thinking what if? I need to see if I can break into that next level and challenge at a higher level.”

As part of her new regime, Lewis undertook a two-week training camp at the Canadian Sports Institute Pacific in Victoria, British Columbia.

While she concedes the upcoming event may be too soon to see any glaring changes in her performance, Lewis is confident she has already made marginal gains towards moving in the right direction.

“I’ve definitely noticed some positive changes in the short space of time, but nothing too drastic,” said Lewis, who revealed a greater emphasis of her training will be put on the 100 metres, with lesser significance on the 400 and 800.

“It has been only a month working with Geoff, but I’ve already seen some of the benefits of grasping new philosophies to training and adjustments to approaching events.

“So close to a major championship you don’t want to change things too drastically and so it will be a case of focusing on what I can do this time round and then afterwards there will be some advancements.

“After the championships there will be a lot more changes to not only my training, but also with my chair itself and my position, which will hopefully bring a lot more improvements in the future.

“Moving forward, we have already spoken about focusing more on the 100 metres. I will still do some 400 metres races, but I don’t think I’ll be doing any 800 metres.

“Already in training the focus has been on the 100 metres with short, fast exercises for speed, with a little bit of tempo training [slower reps] still in there for the 400 metres.”

The championships kick off a crucial period for Lewis as she continues her quest to qualify for a fourth Paralympic Games.

While she holds ambitions of challenging for titles, the minimum goal remains securing a top-four finish, which would guarantee a spot at the Games in Paris, next summer.

“You go into every event aiming to race the best you can, trying to set fast times and getting the best results,” added Lewis, who also has the Parapan Am Games in Santiago, Chile, in November, on the horizon.

“However, the main aim for me is at the least being a top-four finisher and gaining automatic qualification to the Paralympic Games, that’s what I’m striving for.”