by Cathy Wood
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There was of course mutual respect between Ludwig Guttmann and Philip Craven, both of whom, for different reasons, in different times, have left their mark on the Paralympic Movement. They may have clashed but both shared a desire to improve the lives of the disabled community. Guttmann approached it from a medical viewpoint, Craven from his perspective as an athlete first and administrator second.
It was fortunate that Guttmann’s lifetime ban on Philip Craven was short-lived. Had it not been, the Paralympic Movement would have lost one of its brightest lights.
Like Guttmann, Craven believes everyone should enjoy the benefits sport offers regardless of race, colour, creed or ability. ‘The greatest benefit of sport without a doubt is sport for all,’ he says. ‘Guttmann thought if you concentrated on elite sport it would stop mass participation – I do not believe that is the case.’
But Craven has enshrined something else in the IPC traditions and values – the desire of athletes at the Paralympic Games to be recognised as elite performers with a disability, and nothing more. He grasped this better than anyone else because as a young man he was driven to excel in every area of wheelchair basketball; he set the bar of achievement and excellence for himself high and expected others on his team to do the same. ‘He pushed himself,’ says Kinsella. ‘If he was in a team and they weren’t taking it seriously, he would sometimes voice his opinion. But that inner strength and determination is Philip.’
Both Guttmann and Craven shared an understanding of the benefits sport has on society, and the ability it has to change the lives of the individuals affected and all around them. Craven knows its effect because it is the life he has lived since the age of 16. He was an athlete who dazzled opponents, amassing a staggering 192 caps for Britain. He once scored 26 points in a single match against the United States, ensuring they were well and truly beaten in a game they invented. ‘They talk about being in the zone,’ he says. ‘You are only ever in the zone once or twice in your career. It is when you are on automatic pilot and can do whatever you have trained for and it happens perfectly. It was 1986 when I played that game for Britain and scored 26 points – I never slept that night.’
Craven was a tenacious administrator, overseeing the successful implementation of a new Wheelchair Basketball classification system, whereby athletes were classified on a broader, more sport-specific basis, which propelled the sport into a different, internationally respected footing. He went on to become President of the International Wheelchair Basketball Federation from 1988–2002.
In 2001 Philip Craven stood for President of the IPC, the international governing body of the Paralympic Movement, which was founded in Dusseldorf, Germany in 1989. Successfully appointed and then re-elected in 2005 and 2009, he is now in his third term of office, which ends in 2013. He has steered the IPC into the 21st century through controversy and change, and towards a future where the Paralympic Games are fully understood as being an elite sporting event. If he succeeds in the latter and oversees a sea change in awareness before his term of office ends in 2013, this may well be his finest achievement because to do so still requires an extraordinary transition in the way the watching public see, understand and appreciate Paralympic sport.
Craven’s example and his own journey, from cocky youngster to one of the most influential people in international multi-sport, makes his message both compelling and engaging, as Baroness Sue Campbell, Chair of UK Sport since 2003 and herself a highly experienced figure in sport at all levels, has seen first-hand. ‘When you meet Philip, you meet this forthright, articulate, formidable personality,’ she says. ‘I have watched him transfix audiences. He has a bluntness, a directness, which made people think very hard. I don’t think he is afraid to stand up for what he believes in. He has strong values and he carried those into the IPC role.’
She added, ‘The thing that shines out of Philip is his understanding of the power of sport in terms of how he found, or re-found, a sense of direction and purpose through sport. He really believes in sport as a way of shaping lives. You sense he sees this as a fundamental part of enabling people with disabilities to take their rightful place in community and society. That comes through like a light when he is talking.’
Campbell believes it’s his straight talking, ‘this-is-who-I-am’ approach which has such power: ‘As he speaks, and communicates, that piece of the human spirit shines in him in a way which is quite distinctive. It does not matter that he is bull-doggy and belligerent, and all those other things. Something shines in him, and still does, and it is a defiance which says damn it, I will and damn it, I am going to. He has done it and you have to admire and respect that completely.’
Whether he would accept the observations of others is unknown. There is no doubt, though, in his lifetime Philip Craven has helped bring about important, enduring and inspiring change in the Paralympic Movement.
When Guttmann died in 1980, Craven chose not to attend his funeral. They may not have shared a friendship, but they did share a passion to empower and engender respect for those with a disability. Were Guttmann alive today, he may have recognised that Craven ultimately held the same values as he did.
Chapter Three
Standing Out From the Crowd
‘We are all meant to shine, as children do. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.’
Marianne Williamson, author
There are some athletes who might have gone on to achieve sporting greatness no matter what their circumstance: there is something about the qualities they exude that sets them apart. It is their single-minded focus, attention to detail or willingness to push personal and physical boundaries – or probably a combination of all three – that makes them special. But there are a select few whose influence is felt for reasons other than simple athletic success, whose stories stay in the heart and mind long after the victory ceremonies have finished. Their qualities manifest themselves in different ways. Some may show an unexpected warmth and (sometimes dark) humour that puts others at their ease. Others may pioneer new ways in which to perform a sport, and then set new benchmarks in it, as if to prove their point. Whatever their qualities, all these athletes are linked by a common thread: in one way or another, they all stand out.
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When Sulwen and Peter Grey discovered their daughter Carys had spina bifida they couldn’t possibly have imagined that one day she would do more than any other person of her generation to move public awareness and understanding of sport for disabled people to a new level. Nor would they have dreamed that the name Tanni Grey, later Grey-Thompson when she married husband Ian in May 1999, would become inexorably linked with elite sport, or that her ‘there’s nothing walking would give me I don’t already have’ approach to disability was, in part at least, down to their huge influence.
In the early 1970s, Sulwen and Peter approached Carys’ upbringing, growing up near Cardiff, in exactly the same way they had her older sister, Sian. But first they had to get used to calling her Tanni. When Sian first saw her newborn baby sister she called her ‘tiny’ but it sounded like Tanni and the name stuck. In fact, if either parent attempted to call Tanni, ‘Carys’, Sian would scream the place down.
Spina bifida means ‘split spine’, and although Tanni had a relatively mild form, her condition was complicated and exacerbated by a curvature of the spine. The fact she survived childhood at all was a not inconsiderable achievement since most children born with the condition before the 1970s died within the first year of life. Tanni had ankle-to-thigh callipers to help her get around, but nonetheless her walking deteriorated over time and by the age of seven she increasingly needed to use a wheelchair.
Even before the change to using a wheelchair came about, her father, Peter, an architect, was aware that the environment they then lived in was both inaccessible and inhospitable to wheelchair users. There were many everyday obstacles to navigate, as well as those further afield. They couldn’t go t
o the cinema as a family because wheelchairs were regarded as a fire risk and a day out they could all enjoy would be one where Tanni would not be in a panic trying to find a toilet. In the early 1970s, wheelchair-accessible conveniences did not exist.
But if it bothered Peter Grey, he never showed it. Instead he instilled in his daughter a lasting, far-sighted belief that the world would have to change to accommodate her and not the other way around. There was, he repeatedly told her, absolutely nothing wrong with growing up in a wheelchair. ‘In those days disabled people were locked away, ghettoised and hidden from view,’ recalls Tanni, ‘but Mum and Dad were just these two incredibly positive people. It is just the way they were.’ Peter also never made it out to be a big deal. ‘I don’t remember Mum and Dad ever talking about me being in a chair,’ says Tanni.
Nevertheless it can’t have been easy to hear, at the end of a working day, that other mothers had deliberately pushed their children out of the way of Tanni in the local supermarket for fear they might catch something. Or that a child at the Girls’ Brigade called their daughter, ‘Limpy Legs’. Mind you, Tanni’s reaction to this particular childhood experience was pretty emphatic: she simply refused to go back.
Throughout it all, Sulwen and Peter remained steadfast. Such behaviour was not their problem but rather the ill-informed attitude of others. ‘Mum and Dad never saw the chair. I didn’t grow up thinking I was disabled because they never let anyone patronise or discriminate against me,’ says Tanni.
Initially, her parents involved her in sport for exactly the same reasons all children engage in it: exercise is good for you, it builds confidence, coordination and teamwork, and in Tanni’s case, it would improve her strength, which as a very young child was lacking. So, Tanni swam and went horse riding, played basketball and participated in archery. It probably helped that Dewi Thomas, her headmaster at Birchgrove Primary School, insisted, in an age long before inclusivity became law, Tanni be involved in all PE activities. He also refused to tell anyone in authority that she was in a wheelchair, knowing if he did, she would be removed and sent to a special school instead. ‘He was very protective,’ says Tanni.
Being born into a family of sports fans would undoubtedly have had an influence on Tanni’s outlook. ‘Dad played cricket and golf quite a lot and was a huge sports fan. As a family we watched a lot of rugby and football, and whatever other sports were on TV at the time,’ she remembers. Watching was one thing, but even as a youngster Tanni preferred participating to pontificating on the performances of others.
As Tanni’s primary school education came to an end there was still the issue of where to go next. The local secondary school, where all her friends were going, refused to accept her on the grounds it wasn’t wheelchair accessible. In reality, though, this was her first real experience of discrimination.
In the early 1980s disabled children didn’t usually go into mainstream education: they went to special schools, and that’s what the Local Education Authority wanted for Tanni. But it wasn’t what Peter Grey wanted for his daughter. Both he and Sulwen knew what the special system offered and it was not appropriate. After all, it was Tanni’s body that was impaired, not her brain and a proper education wasn’t a luxury, it was her right.
Peter studied the Warnock Report on special education – the White Paper for the 1981 Education Act – and his perseverance paid off. Buried somewhere in it, he found a line which said every child had the right to be taught in an environment best suited to their educational needs. It was this argument he successfully used to secure a place for Tanni at St Cyres Comprehensive in Penarth. It was an extra nine miles in each direction than the journey to the local secondary school would have been, but it was still a milestone in Tanni’s life. And there was another gift that emerged from the process.
Being called ‘Limpy Legs’ was an unpleasant, passing experience but not the end of the world but going to the wrong secondary school would have been catastrophic. Tanni’s parents had demonstrated the importance of picking the right battles.
As it happened, St Cyres was right next door to a special school and when their summer sports day took place, Tanni joined in. She already swam at St Cyres but here at the special school were other children in wheelchairs and with that came the chance to compete against them. One of Tanni’s first races was the 60m, which she won. It may have been an inauspicious start to her wheelchair athletics career but much to Tanni’s surprise, she enjoyed both the experience and the competition.
So it was with more than a little interest that the sports-mad Grey family settled down for the Opening Ceremony of the Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games and watched American Rafer Johnson, the 1960 Olympic Decathlon champion, ascend a steep, moving staircase to the top of the stadium, from where he lit the Olympic Flame. As the festival of sport unfolded, they watched American Ed Moses win the 400m Hurdles and Britain’s Sebastian Coe become the first man ever to win successive 1500m Olympic titles.
More than 20 years later, when Coe made his impassioned final speech to the International Olympic Committee in Singapore in 2005 as head of the London 2012 bid delegation, he told the audience about the moment that shaped his life. He was 12 in the summer of 1968 when, along with his classmates, he was taken into a large school hall to watch images from the Mexico City 1968 Games beamed back onto an old black-and-white TV. Two athletes, husband and wife John and Sheila Sherwood, from Coe’s hometown of Sheffield, were competing. John won bronze in the 400m Hurdles and Sheila silver in the Long Jump. ‘By the time I was back in my classroom, I knew what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be,’ Coe told delegates.
And yet his own performance in Los Angeles, along with others, impacted on a young Tanni Grey. By the time the 1984 Games were over, she too knew what she wanted to do. ‘I wanted to be an athlete,’ she says, although back then it was as likely to be wheelchair basketball or archery as it was athletics.
Tanni had sporting talent, of that there was no doubt. And had she been born without an impairment she would, in all probability, still have been a world-class sportswoman but most likely, in cycling rather than athletics. Back then, though, it would be a few more years yet before she settled on her chosen sport. And not until she was 22 did she decide that being the very best in the world at wheelchair racing was her destiny.
If Tanni was to take on the world’s best she needed to be in an environment geared to winning, which is why, in the late 1980s, she picked Loughborough University as the next stop on her sporting and educational journey. Almost as soon as she arrived, she encountered various hurdles. The athletics track was hard to access and while there was a ramp, it could only be used if Tanni phoned ahead and requested a special gate be opened for her. And then there were the attitudes of the other athletes themselves.
Turning up for one circuit-training session Tanni was greeted by a young track runner, who informed her the session was for athletes. ‘I know, I do wheelchair racing,’ she responded. But the runner was unconvinced and told her they would be climbing up ropes as part of the session. Tanni simply got out of her chair and using the strength in her upper body, shimmied up to the top of the rope without so much as taking breath. Point proven, Tanni got on with her training, but it was a lonely, often unfriendly environment and since most of the conditioning work revolved around building leg strength, it wasn’t relevant. ‘I did some training with the athletics club, but it wasn’t that helpful,’ she says. In the end, thanks to the suggestion of a university friend, she ended up joining the mountaineering club, which was far more conducive to the type of strength and conditioning training she needed to do.
By 1988 Tanni was competing in the national championships using her first-ever racing wheelchair, provided by a charity, and making something of a name for herself in the wheelchair-racing world. By the time she arrived home from Loughborough at the end of her first year, she found a letter inviting her to represent Great Britain at the Seoul Paralympic Games.
But it was still only 1988
and the Paralympic Movement was in its infancy. Seoul 1988 would be only the seventh games since Rome in 1960 and only the fourth to admit amputees and athletes with a visual impairment. Tanni was entered in the Athletics 100m, 200m, 400m and Slalom, as well as Wheelchair Basketball, and returned with a bronze for the 400m. As yet, few outside the Paralympic movement had heard of Tanni Grey, but the medal from Seoul was proof indeed that the talent first shown in Wales a decade earlier had already translated onto a world stage. But this was just the beginning and there was so much more to come.
By the time Tanni got home from Seoul all she could think of was how to be a better athlete in the remaining three and a half years before selection for the Barcelona 1992 Paralympic Games. She didn’t want to be patted on the head or thought of as brave and wonderful. Quite the contrary – all she wanted to do was train harder, smarter and more effectively than her rivals.
She imagined she’d race for a year or two and then be forced to get a well-paid job to provide her with enough income to pay for all the travel costs needed to train and race at the top level. As it happened, she won enough money in that first year not to need a full-time job and her clean sweep at the Barcelona 1992 Games, where she won the 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m on the track, ensured this arrangement would continue.
Although success in Spain marked her arrival on the international sporting stage, there was no danger of it going to her head. At major championships Tanni’s father, Peter, and sister, Sian, were frequent track-side spectators but not her mother, Sulwen, who found the races unbearably tense to watch so would often stay at home, where she could better keep her nerves under control. Tanni was competing in the heats of the 400m, which she won. The shock was not the ease with which she crossed the line, but the time on the scoreboard: 59.20. It was a new world record and the first time a woman had broken the one-minute barrier for one lap of the track. Bursting with excitement, she rang home to tell her mother. ‘I have just broken the 400m world record,’ she blurted out. But Sulwen was unimpressed: Tanni had been shown spitting a mouthful of water onto the track, as many athletes routinely do. As far as she was concerned, world record or not, this was unacceptable behaviour and she made it clear. ‘There is no need to spit on the track, you know,’ she told her.
