by Cathy Wood
But not this particular bone, and not in Tom’s back. As the chat with the surgeon came to an end, Marion and Bob faced the first of many agonising decisions. Would they, or the surgeon, tell Tom the heartbreaking news?
After some discussion it was felt best if the surgeon did this and so, with Bob at her side, Marion stood in the background as Tom was told he would never walk again. Less than 24 hours had passed since the fall. All Tom’s parents could do was to hold each other’s hands, hearts aching, and know that whatever abyss Tom had fallen into the night before, they would be there for him as they all began their own journeys into the unknown.
In the days that followed Tom faced a choice: lie in bed for three months and rest to allow his damaged back to heal or opt for an operation to fuse and stabilise the back, above and below the break. He chose the latter and was soon moved to Stanmore, close to his parents’ home, where the procedure and his subsequent rehabilitation could take place.
Once Tom had recovered from surgery, he began the long and slow, frustrating journey into a new, unplanned life. ‘At first I was in so much pain I just had to lie and look at the ceiling. I tried not to get frustrated: you can throw a tantrum or just get on with it. Even so, there were horrible times when I just wanted to have a shower and wash my hair – you just have to deal with it.’
If it was hard for Tom, he was at least in the early days cushioned by morphine and the fact that he didn’t accept the injury was permanent. ‘I thought I would recover and I did have that belief for the first six weeks. I was so fit and strong, if anyone had a good chance of recovery it was me,’ he explains.
For Marion and Bob, forced to watch from the sidelines, there was no denial only the dawning realisation that there was nothing, practically, they could do but offer constant love and support, and in Marion’s case, a stream of home-cooked meals to alleviate the boredom of hospital food. ‘If you see your child struggle, it is the worst thing in the world,’ she says, ‘and it doesn’t get any easier.’
While Tom’s days were filled with various activities, such as learning the basic skills of getting in and out of a wheelchair unaided and then manoeuvring his new mode of transport in and out of the tightest spaces, his parents could do no more but sit and watch. ‘It was almost harder for them,’ Tom recalls. ‘There really was nothing they could do.’ Things came to a head one day when, during a visit, Marion and Bob just sat and stared. In the end Tom had to ask them what they were staring at. ‘I think it was just their shock and frustration,’ he says.
Sometimes that frustration would be turned into action and Marion would spend hours on the hospital’s internet service searching for information or an insight into some new miracle cure that might lead to a change in her son’s long-term physical outlook. Until one day when one of the doctors gave her a piece of advice she would never forget: ‘Don’t use your energy to search – use it all to go forward.’
From that moment onwards Marion realised there was no point in looking back to possible, yet-to-be discovered medical solutions: she needed to look to Tom’s future, albeit now different to the one she might have imagined. ‘In my naivety I’ve always been able to help my children but in this case it wasn’t possible,’ she says, ‘there was no answer.’
So instead she used her energy to re-focus, to change direction and think what Tom might do with his life next, what kind of wheelchair he needed and how he could be more independent. And so they looked forward, not back.
Like all parents who find their lives irreversibly changed by a random, inexplicable event, Marion had to come to terms with the fact that this was something over which she had no control. ‘I couldn’t put it right,’ she says. ‘You stand up for them at school to make sure they don’t get bullied, you take them to the GP to get them the right inoculations and you put every part of your being into making sure you do the best for them, and then this evil thing happened and there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t resolve it: I was so mad about it.’
As the weeks in Stanmore passed there were two people now involved in the lives of the Aggar family, who saw the kind of struggle they faced and knew exactly what to do. Occupational therapist Lynne Hills and physiotherapist Tania Smith worked to restore some of the basic skills needed in everyday life. Tom had been placed in a plastic cast from his hips to his underarms to help his spine heal correctly: any kind of movement was hard and challenging, and his legs were heavy weights which he had to lift from one place and put down in another.
‘You are lying in bed wondering how to put your life back together,’ says Tom. ‘It was the approach of Lynne and Tania that was such an eye-opener. After I spent time with them, I worked hard and got on with it. They teach you how to dress and how to get in and out of bed. They are the little things you take for granted, but they are also the things that make you independent: they are showing you your way back into life.’
Just weeks into a three-month hospital stay, Tania Smith made a prediction. ‘One day,’ she said, ‘Tom Aggar will go to the Paralympic Games.’ Aggar laughed the suggestion off and yet one key quality remained undimmed by the accident, which she had perhaps seen. His competitive spirit was very much alive. Six weeks after surgery, complete with a stiff, plastic body brace to protect his fused spine and ensure it healed in a straight position, Tom wheeled himself into Stanmore’s hospital gym and started to improve his strength and fitness, still believing if a cure to paralysis could be found through stem cell development then the fitter he was, the more chance he would have of benefiting. ‘In the early days I did think I would recover. It gave me the motivation to get back on track. It wasn’t about getting in shape to compete, it was about being fit to be ready, if a medical breakthrough came,’ he explained.
By May 2005, he was well enough to go home and then decided to return to Warwick to finish his degree. The University was magnificent, providing a ground-floor flat, wet room and disabled parking bay, while his fellow students, who had never known him before the accident, readily pitched in to help whenever needed. Sociable and affable by nature, Tom had no difficulty in making friends.
And so it was with immense pride that Marion, Bob and Joe were on hand to see Tom graduate with a First in the summer of 2006. A bit later than originally planned perhaps, but mission nonetheless more than accomplished.
***
By then pretty fit from swimming and gym workouts, Aggar already knew about a new type of rowing machine for the disabled from his time at Stanmore. This was a pioneering type of rower for those unable to use their legs, which artificially stimulated the muscles in a similar way to a non-disabled person. Tom decided to have a go and immediately loved it. He then entered himself in the British Indoor Rowing Championships and duly won his category in a new world record time.
It was here that he came into contact with the Paralympic squad and by late 2006, tried rowing on the water for the first time at East London’s Royal Docks: ‘My goal then was not to compete at the Paralympic Games, but to enjoy it.’ And it was a goal he more than met. ‘There was no part I didn’t enjoy,’ he recalls. ‘Psychologically, it gets you out of the chair. You are forced to spend 12 hours a day in it, not by choice. Initially, it gave me such a sense of freedom. For a while I did resent being resigned to moving around in a chair and rowing was a way to get out of it.’
Although he could not steer particularly well and his university-acquired fitness proved meagre against the endurance of other rowers, Tom had the bug. And, despite a lack of elite level fitness, he quickly proved good at the sport.
By March 2007, he was winning the men’s Single Sculls at the British selection trials for the World Championships in Munich later that year, and by the summer of 2007 he beat the reigning World Champion, setting a new Paralympic record at the same time. ‘Going to Munich opened my eyes up to the sport and how everyone else in the world was training. Getting selected to represent Great Britain was brilliant. I got such a buzz from the competition, knowing I was competing in
the sport at the very highest level,’ he says.
Next stop Beijing 2008, and Tom Aggar couldn’t wait. He wanted to be in the best shape possible. Not, this time, in case of some new development in stem cell research: he now had a very different goal. He wasn’t about to dedicate the next year of his life to come second – he was going to Beijing to win.
If Tom thought he had trained hard in the run-up to the 2007 World Championships, he was in for a bit of a shock. As 2007 ended and the banks of the River Thames lit up in a blaze of fireworks to welcome in 2008, members of the British Paralympic Rowing squad were about to get a boost of their own as training and preparation reached new levels of intensity.
Back in 1960, when the very first Games for the Paralysed were held outside the UK, there had been a call, even then, to add new events to the programme. The Paralympic Games of the 21st century are no different as athletes, International Federations and countries all clamour to have new sports added. At the next Games after London 2012, the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Paralympic Games, Para-Triathlon and Para Canoe will take the existing number of sports from 20 to 22.
At Beijing 2008, the new sport on the block was Rowing and suddenly everyone was taking it a lot more seriously. Rowing – where the equipment is adapted to the disability of the competitor, and the distance shortened from the 2000m used at Olympic regattas to 1000m – was about to make its Paralympic debut. ‘I thought training five or six times a week was a lot. Now it was three times a day, just like the Olympic squad,’ says Aggar. ‘I had never been in a set-up which was pushing you as an athlete.’
And although Aggar and the rest of the squad were still training in Spain when the Olympic Games took place, watching teammates like Zac Purchase and Mark Hunter power to victory on the same lake the Paralympic team would be competing on in a few weeks’ time only served to motivate and inspire them through the last days of training. As would the knowledge that whatever training the British Olympic team had done, the Paralympic approach had been similarly methodical and thought through.
Back in London Marion, Bob and Joe Aggar were making plans of their own, preparing to fly to Beijing to watch Tom in action. They wouldn’t miss this moment for the world.
At the Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park in Beijing Aggar progressed to the final of the men’s Single Sculls without incident and returned to the Village to make his final preparations.
In another part of Beijing, Marion was also preparing for the next day and wondering how she would console her son if he did not win. As she settled down, sleep proved elusive and she spent a good part of it lying awake. ‘I just wanted to get there and take my seat in the stands,’ she says.
When the big day finally came, Tom needed to prepare physically and mentally. He pushed his chair ever quicker around the lake to warm up and then stretched every muscle. All the time he was plugged into his MP3 player, listening to rapper Eminem.
Unaware of the pre-race rituals Tom was going through, Marion and the rest of the Aggar family were busy taking their seats and making friends with the Americans and Canadians sitting nearby. Back in Barnet, north London pupils at Tom’s old school, Queen Elizabeth’s, gathered round the television and waited.
As the moments ticked by, Marion could only sit and hope the final preparations had gone to plan and that all the rigging and strapping – required to hold the rowers in a fixed position so as to avoid falling forward during the race – was in place. ‘If Tom knew, he would think I was mad but I was just willing everything to be perfect for him,’ she says.
As it turned out, as races go at this level it was pretty faultless. Slightly ahead of the Ukrainian rower, Oleksandr Petrenko at the 500m, or halfway point, Aggar began to pull away. By the 750m point his boat cut a graceful sight as his superior strength meant each stroke took him closer to the finishing line and gold.
‘I knew it was in the bag,’ said Marion, while not underestimating the physical pain Tom would be in as the build-up of lactic acid in his arms screamed for him to stop. Minutes later, amid a cacophony of noise which drowned everything else out, Aggar crossed the line as Britain’s first-ever men’s Paralympic Rowing champion.
Up in the stands Marion hugged and kissed Bob, who hugged Joe, who found himself embraced by total strangers. All around British flags waved as a jubilant contingent of friends, family and supporters clapped and cheered with delight.
Every parent will tell you they can spot their child a mile off. For most, it will be as they run out onto the pitch for football practice or meander out of the school gates at the end of the day. For a tiny minority, it will be when witnessing their child doing something extraordinary. Marion and Bob Aggar were about to join that elite club as Tom wheeled towards the victory podium. ‘I could see this beautiful, smiling face,’ Marion says. Tom bent his head to receive the ultimate sporting accolade, a Paralympic gold medal. As he lifted a British flag and savoured the moment not for the first time in recent years his parents could not quite believe what they saw, although this time their disbelief was accompanied by different emotions.
‘He deserved it,’ says Marion. ‘Not because he had an accident but because he had put his heart and soul into it. As a mother, I had the best possible outcome from something so awful happening.’
Meanwhile, amid the euphoria congratulatory hugs, kisses and the camaraderie and support from teammates, Tom Aggar’s phone lit up with calls and congratulatory text messages. ‘Well done on winning gold. If I’m not mistaken a certain person predicted you would be in the Paralympic Games one day. Congratulations!’ bleeped one. Not recognising the number, he scrolled down to see who it was from.
Few could have believed a journey that began with an unfathomable accident on a garden path more than three years earlier would alight here, on the outskirts of China’s capital city on a sunny autumnal day in front of thousands of cheering Chinese and an ecstatic British rowing camp. Among those who did see the possibilities and opportunities that lay ahead for the young man before her was the sender of this particular text. And her name? Tania Smith from Stanmore hospital’s physiotherapy department.
***
Paralysis caused by accident becomes even more difficult to deal with when the cause is beyond your own control and is wrapped up in great tragedy, as was the case with Josie Pearson, and her then boyfriend, Daniel Evans.
Like many young men his age, 19-year-old Daniel loved driving fast and once told Josie, two years his junior, he might well end up dead in a car accident. Born in Bristol and brought up near Hay-on-Wye, Josie didn’t pay his prediction too much attention. It was 2003 and the 17-year-old was too busy riding, a sport she had fallen in love with after she first tried it at the age of four.
By the time she was 17 she had her own horse, George, to look after, train and prepare for the county competitions in cross country, dressage and show jumping, which she would regularly take part in. Riding every day was both her passion and her life, so much so she once told a friend if she could not ride, she would rather die.
And then in the summer of 2003 Josie, Daniel and three other friends were on a night out when their vehicle was involved in a fatal three-car pile-up. Daniel died instantly while Josie’s best friend, Laura Miles (who was sitting next to Josie in the back) broke her pelvis and suffered internal injuries. Of the two other friends, one remarkably escaped unharmed while the other, Dan’s best friend, broke his back but was not paralysed.
Josie was not so lucky, breaking her neck at level C6/C7 as the vertebrae pushed into her spinal cord, causing irreparable nerve damage and paralysis from the chest down. During her rehabilitation at Oswestry Spinal Unit, she came across a Great Britain Wheelchair Rugby player, Alan Ash, who suggested she should come along and give the sport a try. Interestingly, at Paralympic level, Wheelchair Rugby is a mixed sport made up of teams of 12 men and women, of which only four can be on court at any one time.
Initially, Josie wanted to return to riding, but when she found it neither as fulfil
ling or exciting as she had before her accident, she decided to take up the wheelchair rugby idea, emailing the secretary at Cardiff Pirates for information.
She enjoyed the fast and furious pace of the sport and being the only girl at Cardiff hardly mattered: she loved being part of a team and quickly proved good enough to be considered for the Great Britain squad. Eventually at the age of 22, she became the first woman to represent her country at the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games, where the team came fourth. ‘It was the most amazing experience of my life so far,’ she said. ‘My aim had been to represent London in 2012, so going to Beijing in the first place was so exciting.’
And yet, despite the thrill of competing, Josie missed the individuality that being solely in charge of a horse brings. The year before the Beijing Games she had tried some wheelchair track racing. ‘It was like riding again,’ she said. ‘It really appealed to me.’ Even so, it seemed far too much of a risk to change sports in the run-up to Beijing, so Pearson decided to wait, although the thought of competing on the track rather than with a rugby ball never went away.
And then in 2010 an opportunity presented itself that was too good to miss. ParalympicsGB – the governing body for Paralympic athletes in Great Britain – operates a Talent Transfer Scheme for those athletes who wish to switch from one sport to another. When Pearson met up with Peter Eriksson, who was appointed UK Athletics Paralympic Head Coach in December 2008, he offered to coach her for 2012. Eriksson, a former international speed skater, is one of the most successful and respected, coaches in the world, having helped athletes bring home some 119 medals in seven Games, from 1984 to 2008.
He also coached the exceptional Canadian wheelchair track athlete, Chantal Petitclerc, who having lost both her legs at the age of 13 following an accident, went on to win 21 Paralympic medals in five Games, from Barcelona in 1992 to Beijing in 2008, when she retired. At Beijing 2008 she dominated the track, winning five gold medals in the 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m and 1500m, and set three world records.
