Paralympic Heroes
Page 17
Mary Anne Radmacher, writer and artist
Sometimes there are moments in a sport’s development or an athlete’s career that catapult unsuspecting individuals into the spotlight and generate a media frenzy. These moments can be magical, or controversial, inspiring or insensitive; what unites them all is that they stay in the memory long after the event that caused them is over. These are the moments that can change awareness and expectation forever.
Recall the graceful, charismatic Jamaican runner Usain Bolt winning over the watching world as he flew down the track at Beijing 2008 to take the 100m crown in a new world record of 9.69 seconds. When he lined up for the 200m, a second gold medal was delivered. And then a third in the 4 x 100m Relay.
The Paralympic Games has its own heroes, but those who have the greatest impact are the ones who achieve such dominance in a particular sport: they set new benchmarks others can only aspire to and the public sits up and takes note. These defining moments, somehow, change our perception and admiration. And then, just occasionally the feats of these athletes transcend the sporting arena and cross over into society.
Tanni Grey-Thompson has had plenty of defining moments of her own in her career to choose from. Was it the time she won her first Paralympic medal, a bronze, at Seoul 1988 or the four golds that followed at Barcelona 1992? Perhaps the crushing disappointment of losing three of those four titles at Atlanta 1996 and then being told, at the age of 27, it was time to retire? Was it proving everyone wrong with four gold medals at Sydney 2000 or a moment of crass television history that people remember about her most? Or was it the moment her racing career really began with a £2,000 donation from Peter, her father, who gave her the money after graduation so she could spend a year concentrating on racing in Barcelona without the need to look for a job?
As far as the public was concerned it was probably Tanni’s regular appearances on the start line of the London Marathon – an event she won six times in total – that first caught their attention. Being associated with, and winning, such a high-profile, global race did her reputation no harm nor did her willingness to share the experience with viewers. One year she even allowed the BBC to strap a 2kg camera to her wheelchair and fit a microphone to provide a better insight into the skill and endurance wheelchair racing demands. Not that these marathons were ever particularly lucrative. According to her autobiography, Seize the Day, the most prize money Tanni ever picked up for these victories was less than £1,000.
One big factor in raising her profile though, and that of elite sport for athletes with a disability in general, was the role BBC sports presenter Helen Rollason played. Engaging and knowledgeable, Rollason was a true sports fan who brought passion to her reporting and appreciated and understood Paralympic sport for what it was. She covered the Barcelona 1992 and Atlanta 1996 Games (both for the BBC) and helped to ensure disability sport took its place on mainstream television. In addition to this she was the first female presenter of the BBC’s flagship sports programme, Grandstand, and perhaps getting to the top in a notoriously tough and male-dominated profession gave her a natural affinity with Grey-Thompson. Whatever it was, the two became friends and Tanni invited Rollason to her wedding to cyclist Ian Thompson in Cardiff in May 1999.
By then, however, Rollason, one of the brightest female television presenters, had been diagnosed with colon cancer, which later spread to her liver and lungs. By the time of the wedding she was too ill to attend and died in August 1999. She was 43.
So it was with some irony that an award presented to Tanni Grey-Thompson in Rollason’s memory at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2000 was followed by one of the biggest sporting gaffes in the history of Paralympic Games coverage – the ripples of which are still felt today.
A lack of knowledge about Paralympic sport and what it takes to excel at the highest level still exists. This may be less entrenched and less patronising than it once was, but it certainly hasn’t been eradicated. Countless athletes have recounted tales from everyday life about a lack of awareness, no matter how well-meaning or accidental. Take the example given by a wheelchair athlete on a recent shopping trip to a supermarket with her husband. Once the required items had been paid for by said athlete, the cashier gave the change back to the athlete’s husband. Or the time another wheelchair athlete approached an automatic door only to find a member of the public insisting on standing in front of the sensor until the athlete had passed through. What the athlete wanted to say, but didn’t, was that the door opens for someone in a wheelchair in the same way it opens for an non-disabled person – there is no need to stand and ‘hold’ it. Sometimes these incidents arise out of a lack of insight, other times it’s just a well-meaning, if over-eager, desire to help.
Tanni Grey-Thompson has never thought of, or seen, herself as any different to anyone else. She didn’t take up sport to show the world what athletes with a disability could do: she participated because she enjoyed it and then discovered she was exceptionally good at it. That she touched the hearts and minds of those watching on her path from sports devotee to World and Paralympic champion was an entirely unconscious by-product of her talent, commitment and hard work.
And although she probably didn’t realise it at the time it was this attitude, together with a number of unforgettable performances and humbling moments, which enshrined her in the nation’s hearts. By the time she returned from Sydney 2000, her profile was at an all-time high and once the euphoria of the Games had died down, she too, like everyone else, was looking forward to re-living the year’s sporting highlights at the BBC’s annual Sports Personality of the Year awards.
These were, after all, the Games where Steve Redgrave kept more than 6.5 million Britons from their beds as they stayed up to watch him win an historic fifth gold medal in five consecutive Games. Along with Matthew Pinsent, Tim Foster and James Cracknell, the British Coxless Four raced the 2000m of Penrith Lakes to hold off the Italian crew by the narrowest of margins, just 0.38 seconds. There seemed little doubt who would be the recipient of the main prize.
But as the ceremony went on, there was another presentation to be made: the Helen Rollason Award in memory of the sports presenter, which is given ‘for outstanding achievement in the face of adversity’. The inaugural award in 1999 – the year Rollason died – was made to horse trainer Jenny Pitman, the first woman to train a Grand National winner in 1983, who also overcame thyroid cancer. Since the award’s inception there have been 12 recipients. All have been British apart from South African Paralympic sprinter, Oscar Pistorius, in 2007.
Much to Tanni’s surprise she realised that the award was being made to her. The assumption was that her disability automatically meant she must always have faced an uphill battle to get to the top, but she felt being singled out for the award missed the point: ‘I don’t think there has been much adversity. I grew up in a middle-class home with parents who could afford to help me do things. They were educated and helped smooth the path. My parents did not shower me with money but they opened up the way. When they made the announcement, it was about everything I had overcome.’
After all, Tanni hadn’t overcome anything different to the hundreds of other athletes gathered there that night. She worked just as hard, obtained a travelling grant from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust so she could go to Australia to train with one of the best wheelchair coaches in the business and followed a training programme that required commitment, perseverance and a lot of hard work. And when it came to race day she executed her plans with precision and vision.
Tanni trained 15 times a week, every week, and had two weeks off a year, in October. She trained on Christmas and Boxing Day, and missed plenty of birthdays and family gatherings in pursuit of excellence. In 1996, she went out and got a job that would help her develop and refine the skills needed to support her once her competitive days were over. And she was happy with it all. Of course there were challenges along the way, but they were different to ‘overcoming’ her disability.
Being an athlete was never about proving something about her disability. ‘It was about proving something to Mum and Dad. Proving I could be good at sport,’ she says. And she’s pretty sure if she’d been born without spina bifida she would have still been an athlete for the simple reason it is how you use your natural talent which sets individuals apart. ‘I don’t think I would have been a runner, perhaps a cyclist. I think I probably would have been as good because to be good as a Paralympian is not just turning up and having a go: you have to have talent and you have to use it,’ she explains.
There is absolutely nothing tragic – a word often used by the non-disabled when viewing disability – about Tanni’s life or the fact that she uses a wheelchair. ‘There is nothing walking would give me that I don’t already have in my life. It might mean I could walk up a few back staircases but that’s no big deal,’ she observes. In fact her view is that a wheelchair gives her greater mobility, not less.
Tanni’s long and decorated career successes owe as much to her own approach to training as to natural talent. But that does not mean there were no challenges and irritations along the way. One was a lack of financial parity with non-disabled athletes when races were won. There was prize money and Tanni negotiated her own sponsorship deals. But the figures were incomparable with the rewards non-disabled athletes received. ‘I think people imagine you are on £100,000 a year – it was never that,’ she says. In fact, she earned significantly more money in the first year after her retirement in 2007 than during many of her competitive years.
There were other niggles, too, such as a lack of representative kit to race in. ‘I had leftover Olympic kit for most of my career,’ she recalls. In Athens 2004, despite the fact she had already won nine Paralympic gold medals, she was given one racing suit to compete in 11 times over 12 days. Given her demanding schedule, she asked if it might be possible to have another suit. When that seemed difficult, she offered to buy one. ‘I was told it was not fair as I could afford to buy kit and there were some on the squad who could not,’ she says. So Tanni, who by now was in a much better financial position than many athletes, offered to buy the extra kit needed for the whole squad. ‘Suddenly more kit was found,’ she adds.
Whether it is because she is in a wheelchair or because she used it with such devastating effect on the track and road, people remember Tanni Grey-Thompson. They also remember what happened that night at the Sports Personality of the Year awards.
Tanni was sitting in the audience next to some swimmers she did not know and having received the Helen Rollason Award, was lost in thought when the countdown to the main prize began. Her mind was drifting off when it was suddenly brought back to reality. ‘And in third place, Britain’s best-known Paralympian…’
She had come third in the public telephone vote – proof, were it necessary, of how the watching public viewed her achievements. But while second-place heptathlete, Denise Lewis, and winner, Steve Redgrave, could walk from their seats to the stage to pick up their trophies, the BBC had forgotten to put a ramp in place, which meant Tanni was stuck in the audience.
There was an awkward pause before former England captain Alan Shearer stepped off the podium and took the award to where Tanni was sitting. With typical grace, she wasn’t angry about what happened. Instead she was thrilled to receive such a prestigious accolade in a year dominated by Redgrave’s historic achievement.
It was, though, a defining moment in British Paralympic history. Of course the BBC apologised to her, but it hardly mattered. The public were indignant. Never again would broadcasters be able to cover Paralympic sport or Paralympic athletes without appreciating what they had achieved and how attitudes towards them had changed.
‘Outrage at BBC blunder’ said the Evening Standard headline the next day, while Gordon Neale, then chief executive of Disability Sport, slammed the oversight. ‘I think it is disgusting that the BBC of all people should forget to have a ramp fitted to the podium for her,’ he said.
In hindsight the episode became a defining moment in the coverage of disability sport and also enhanced Grey-Thompson’s profile. Forgetting the ramp that would have allowed Tanni to wheel herself up onto the stage to collect her award while being an unintentional oversight ended up being one of the best things that could have happened for athletes with a disability.
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And it was a ramp in another country that was to create a boundary-pushing moment for entirely different reasons.
In October 2010, in Delhi, India, Danielle Brown – a young Paralympic star – waved aside her wheelchair and the ramp, deciding instead to step onto the podium to receive her gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in the Team Compound Archery competition. Brown, who uses a wheelchair (though not exclusively), had already made history earlier in the week by becoming the first disabled athlete to represent England in non-disabled competition. Now she’d gone one better, playing her part in winning the team event with fellow archers, Nicky Hunt and Nichola Simpson. Victory in Delhi was a long way from where it all began for Danielle: at Shipton Rugby Club seven years earlier where she started a six-week beginner’s course in archery after a chance conversation on the school bus.
Brought up in the tiny village of Lothersdale, Keighley, in north Yorkshire and the eldest of three girls, Danielle loved sport of every kind. It probably helped that her parents, Duncan and Liz, were active and from the sounds of things, pretty hardy.
By the time she was 11, though, for no particular reason Danielle found walking any distance was becoming unbearably painful. Long family walks became an endurance test of pain rather than anything remotely enjoyable.
It was four years and endless doctor and hospital appointments later before specialists at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London finally diagnosed Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), a rare pain condition which can affect any area of the body. In Danielle’s case, it was her feet that were affected and causing such discomfort that it was as if they had been placed in a fire and were constantly under attack from sharp, shooting pains. Even at night there was little relief.
CRPS means continuous pain and can be caused either by a simple injury or by a more serious one where nerve damage occurs. It is more common in women and older people, aged 50–70, although it can affect all ages, including children.
By now unable to take part in ordinary everyday sporting activities, Danielle heard about archery on the school bus and wanted to have a go. And so, for her 15th birthday present, she was given an archery course. Every Saturday she would spend three hours learning the basic techniques needed. Although she frequently missed the target – and was, she says, ‘terrible’ – after years of being stuck indoors unable to do any sport at all, she loved archery right from the start.
Archery is one of the oldest competitive sports of all. Although there are various different forms, target archery (where the aim is to hit a stationary circular target from varying distances) is the most popular. There are both indoor and outdoor competitions.
Archery also has a long Olympic and Paralympic pedigree. It was first introduced as an Olympic sport in 1900 and then dropped in 1908. Reintroduced for a single Games in 1920, it had a 52-year exile before returning in 1972, where it has remained as an Olympic fixture ever since. The most recent British athlete to win a medal at the Olympic Games is Alison Williamson, who won bronze at Athens 2004. It has been a Paralympic sport at every Games since Rome 1960.
In domestic and international competitions archers can choose to compete
with either a recurve or compound bow. At Olympic level, only Recurve competitions exist while at the Paralympic Games, both Recurve and Compound are contested. Recurve features bows that are the modern-day equivalent of the traditional longbow, whereas Compound uses bows that are shorter in length and allow the arrow, once released, to travel faster. They also have pulleys at the end of the limbs and telescopic sights.
Archery targets are 122cm in diameter and archers shoot from a distance of 70m. The gold ring at the centre (which is worth a maximum 10 points) measures 12.2cm. There is absolutely no difference in the targets or distance an archer shoots from in Olympic or Paralympic competition, making this one of the few sports where there is parity between disabled and non-disabled competitors. Apart from a few exceptional cases where the level of disability is extreme, most competitors with a disability use identical equipment to the non-disabled.
The six-week course was a resounding success. Instead of missing out on sport, Danielle had discovered an activity she could do two or three times a week. Within months she’d bought her own secondhand compound bow and soon she was entering archery competitions. It was here that her talent was first spotted by the non-disabled Yorkshire Junior squad, who invited her to join.
In 2005, the 17-year-old won both the indoor and outdoor non-disabled Junior National Championships. By now, though, the pain in her feet was becoming more intense and she was increasingly dependent on crutches to get around. ‘I had a lot of pain in my feet but I didn’t consider myself disabled,’ she says.
When Danielle won the Junior Championships, her winning trophy and medal were presented by John Cavanagh, the British archer who had won gold in the Individual Compound W1 at the Athens 2004 Games. It seemed the perfect moment to ask about the Paralympic Games. He suggested she make contact with Archery GB, the sport’s governing body, which she did.
As a result she was invited to attend a Development Squad weekend at Stoke Mandeville. Although Danielle was looking forward to a weekend of shooting practice she didn’t realise the get-together would have unexpected, and unseen, benefits: it would change her outlook. ‘I didn’t know anyone else who was disabled,’ she says. She’d already wrestled with the, ‘Why is this happening to me?’ question but now, in this context, she found herself surrounded by athletes with a disability, many of whom had far more severe disabilities and yet still managed to get around with relative ease. Seeing how other athletes coped so well had a profound impact beyond simple learning and information exchange from others: it helped Danielle accept her disability.