Paralympic Heroes

by Cathy Wood

  By now she had been offered a place to read a Law degree at Leicester University and before long was also asked to compete for the non-disabled Junior team at the World Championships in Mexico. The experience, Danielle’s first long-haul trip, obviously agreed with her as she came fourth.

  The following year, she jumped from being fourth in the Junior World Championships to winning the senior Paralympic World Championships in Korea. ‘There are no international junior events for disabled archers,’ she says. ‘My face hurt so much because I didn’t stop smiling all night.’ Hoping for a top-six finish, winning was beyond anything she expected – and her accuracy was superb. She broke eight world records in the course of the tournament. ‘Even now I don’t know what happened,’ she says. ‘I felt I could have stood on my head and pointed the bow in the opposite direction and the arrows would still have hit the target.’ According to her head coach, Tim Hazell, one of the characteristics that sets Danielle apart is her accuracy, obviously a critical part of the sport. ‘She does not shoot a very orthodox style,’ he said, ‘but she has an uncanny aiming ability.’

  One unexpected benefit of Danielle’s ability in archery is the temporary relief from the everyday pain it gives. ‘It is still there, but I don’t think about it so much. It is a bit of escapism for me,’ she explains.

  Given her results, selection for the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games was a near certainty but even so, she didn’t want her parents coming with her to China to watch in case seeing them as spectators put her off. However, as they all sat at home watching the Olympic Games on television, she became increasingly nervous at the prospect of being on the same international stage in a few weeks’ time without her family support network and so changed her mind, deciding she would like them there after all. By then, though, it was too late to alter plans and buy flights and tickets: Duncan and Liz Brown would have to shout at the television instead.

  Although undoubtedly an amazing experience to be a part of, Beijing was also a surreal one which stayed with Danielle even after she had returned. In the Paralympic Village British athletes had to wear the red, white and blue colours in rotation to create a team ‘look’ and unity. For days after her return Danielle would wonder whether it was a red, white or blue day. And then there were the endless hours in the Village once the day’s training was over, with not much to do. ‘There are only so many DVDs you can watch and books you can read,’ she says. As a consequence she ended up eating about five meals a day. ‘I’m lucky I am not in a sport that requires a certain body weight,’ she says. ‘I didn’t cope with it very well.’

  All the same, she made it through to the final with relative ease but then she was worried that, having come all this way, her shooting might let her down on the big day. It helped that her boyfriend, Ali Jawad (a Powerlifter on the British team) sat with her all afternoon and evening reminding her not to doubt her huge ability. She also received an inspirational email from Simon Scott, a professional colleague back in Nottingham, whose archery shop had provided Danielle with all her equipment in the run-up to the competition. ‘You can shoot scores in your sleep your competitors can only dream about,’ he said. Not that Danielle slept that well the night before the final: she was much too nervous.

  The Archery Individual Compound – Open competition was being held at the Paralympic Games for the first time and involved an initial ranking round followed by a series of head-to-heads until two archers were left to fight it out for gold and silver. In the final, Danielle’s opponent was Japan’s Chieko Kamiya, who managed to progress despite shooting relatively poorly in the ranking round. Since Kamiya was assured a medal of one colour or another, the Japanese media crowded round to get a glimpse of the action. For Danielle, it was only ever about one medal: gold. But for Chieko, it was all about enjoying the moment, savouring the atmosphere and waving to the crowd. At 48 years old it was hard to know how many more opportunities might come Chieko’s way and she wanted to make the most of the limelight. Despite the distractions, Danielle needed to keep her concentration. And she did, securing gold with an arrow to spare. Chieko may not have been so demanding or challenging an opponent as she might have expected, but Danielle was now champion of the inaugural Compound Archery – Open competition in the Paralympic Games.

  Already her performances were helping to redefine what was possible for Paralympic athletes but that became even more apparent in the Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games where, just to gain selection, she had to shoot against – and beat – non-disabled archers. And while winning in Delhi attracted huge media interest, competing against non-disabled competitors is entirely normal for Danielle. The only difference is, she uses a stool to shoot from because her balance is so poor. Anyone watching that October day at the Yamuna Sports Complex in Delhi would have seen a display of poise, skill, self-belief and extraordinary mental tenacity under immense pressure. When an athlete rises to the occasion and delivers on a global stage, this is elite sport at its very best, disabled or not.

  While Danielle Brown made history in Delhi this is not a feat that can be repeated at London 2012. Her event, Individual Compound, is on the Paralympic but not the Olympic programme, ruling out a triumphant Indian re-run. But London 2012 or not, Danielle has already pushed the parameters of her sport to new limits.

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  Defining moments are often about extraordinary sporting achievements that raise competition, and spectator experience, to a new level. Like the day in Beijing 2008, when Chris Hoy did something no other British athlete, from any sport, has done for 100 years by becoming the first Olympian since swimmer Henry Taylor in 1908 to win three gold medals at a single Games. These are the once-in-a-generation, thrilling sporting moments people talk about for years to come. And they are the images we see replayed time and again on our screens afterwards.

  When South Africa’s Natalie du Toit removed her prosthetic limb, dived off the pontoon and into Beijing’s Shunyi Lake on 20 August 2008 for the start of the Marathon Swimming 10km she joined an elite band of Paralympic athletes who have crossed the divide between Olympic Games and Paralympic Games participation.

  Alongside 24 of the best open-water swimmers in the world, du Toit more than held her own despite the disadvantage of swimming 10km with just one leg, in a sport which requires the kicking action of both. She finished 16th, just 1 minute and 22 seconds behind the eventual winner, Larisa Ilchenko of Russia, after an event which demands almost two hours of non-stop effort. For Natalie it was the fulfilment of a lifetime’s dream and made her the first female amputee to compete in an Olympic event. To date only five athletes, including du Toit, have competed at both Paralympic and Olympic level in the Summer Games. All have been women. Two competed in Archery, one in Athletics and another in Table Tennis. None have won a medal.

  So far no British athlete has competed at both Games, although as Danielle Brown has shown, there are those already good enough to take on the best in the world in non-disabled sport and win.

  Another athlete good enough to take on non-disabled competition is Sarah Storey, who faces a boundary pushing moment of her own in the run-up to the London Games. Storey could become the first British athlete, and the first cyclist, to cross the threshold from Paralympic athlete to Olympic athlete.

  Like Jody Cundy, a fellow member of the GB Paralympic Cycling team, Storey has already enjoyed a swimming career that’s the envy of many, winning five gold medals in four Games from Barcelona 1992 to Athens 2004. London 2012 will be her sixth Games. ‘I’m almost the grandma of the team,’ she says. Well, hardly. When London 2012 comes around, she’ll be 34. But it’s in the Velodrome that she’s attracted unprecedented media interest because of the possibility that she might compete at both Paralympic and Olympic Games.

  Born in Manchester but brought up in Disley, on the edge of the Peak District, Sarah – the eldest of three children – loved all sport. It helped that her younger brother and sister were also gifted and talented athletes, going on to participate at nation
al level in their own events. Competing was very much a family affair. ‘We would spend hours in the car here, there and everywhere,’ she explains. ‘The reason I am where I am physically is the way my parents brought me up.’

  Although born with a deformed left hand, her parents never treated her any differently so there was nothing to stop her from fulfilling her dreams and ambitions. Besides, her own grandmother worked with the profoundly disabled and as far as she was concerned, Sarah was very well-off indeed.

  At the age of six she watched the Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games and decided there and then that she wanted to become an athlete. To her the particular sport that would eventually involve was less important than the eventual outcome.

  So she played on the boys’ cricket team for a while, enjoyed netball, ran for her county, swam and was a table-tennis champion. But it was, she says, swimming which ‘chose’ her and first gave her the chance to internationally compete for her country.

  At 14, Sarah Storey attended her first Paralympic Games in Barcelona 1992, where she won two gold medals. By the time Atlanta 1996 was over, still aged only 18, she had five. Two came in the 200m Individual Medley SM10, where swimmers do all four strokes – Butterfly, Backstroke, Breaststroke and Freestyle – proving she really was the master of multi-events.

  And she kept very good training company, joining Stockport Metro Swimming Club, one of the country’s top clubs. Day in, day out she would spend hours completing the mileage required alongside swimmers like Graeme Smith, who won a bronze medal in the gruelling 1500m Freestyle, in Atlanta. Just like Danielle Brown’s archery career, Sarah Storey has regularly trained, and raced, alongside non-disabled athletes.

  After Athens 2004, recurring ear infections made pool training increasingly difficult. Not wanting to do too much running in case of leg injury, Sarah went out on a bike to stay fit. ‘I didn’t realise I would be as good as I turned out to be,’ she says, as she quickly became a world record holder on the track and a multiple European champion.

  There would be no more 5am training sessions as Sarah swapped the pool for pedals and on average, three to six hour’s cycling a day, which could rise to seven or eight hours during intense periods. With a winter track season and summer road competitions to prepare for, training can be all-consuming for cyclists.

  When she married her husband Barney, who she met at a competition, they planned it around the cycling season. Like so many other top athletes, this was not a sacrifice: sporting events are immovable and the opportunity to do something others cannot, rare.

  Although her parents never dwelt on why Sarah had a different left hand to her siblings, her mother once said, ‘If only I could give you my hand.’ To which Sarah replied, ‘You’d be useless with one!’ Sarah has learnt to be dextrous and although not having a fully formed hand does affect the pull required at the start of a race, she’s developed techniques to overcome this so she can race on equal terms with the female endurance riders. ‘Once we are up to speed, there is no difference,’ she says.

  All of which paid dividends at Beijing 2008, when Storey won double gold in the Time Trial and the Pursuit (both C1-2/CP4 category), where she set a new world-record time – and all this from someone who’d only been cycling for three years. Her Beijing experience was made even sweeter because Barney won gold on the same day when he rode as the pilot in the Sprint B VI 1–3 for his partially-sighted teammate, Anthony Kappes.

  Even then, Storey was already knocking on the door of the Olympic Games. Her world record time in Beijing would have been good enough to finish sixth in the Olympic Games in the event won by compatriot Rebecca Romero. Like Storey, Romero had switched from being a high performer in one sport – she won silver as a rower in the Quadruple Scull (4x) at Athens 2004 – to go one better at Beijing 2008 in a completely different one.

  If a seed had been sown in Beijing it would well and truly take root when, in December 2009, the IOC ratified changes to the Olympic Games programme for 2012 proposed by the sport’s governing body, the International Cycling Union (UCI). In Beijing the men contested seven events, the women three; in London, in order to increase women’s participation on the track, there will be five events for each. One of the new female additions will be the Team Pursuit. Made up of three riders, this is the event Sarah Storey has her eyes on as it is one not featured on the Paralympic programme.

  Rather than get caught up in the ‘what ifs’, Storey sees the new event as a chance to add something to her programme which will enhance the existing work she is already doing. ‘I am focusing on events,’ she says. ‘Creating history is an outcome that might happen, it might not.’

  As someone who has competed in multiple events in the pool at previous Games, this seems a natural progression. Nevertheless, the road from Paralympic superstar to Olympic start line is littered with twists and turns. One of the biggest hurdles lies right on her doorstep in the shape of the British team itself, which is one of the strongest in the world. Such is the strength in depth Sarah must first contend with the likes of Romero (Olympic Individual Pursuit champion), Wendy Houvenaghel (Olympic and Commonwealth Individual Pursuit silver medallist), Lizzie Armitstead (World Champion in Team Pursuit) and some highly rated junior riders including Laura Trott and Dani King, just to make the team.

  However, Storey proved she could more than hold her own in this company when, together with Wendy Houvenaghel and Joanna Rowsell, she finished just a quarter of a second outside the world record when they won the Team Pursuit on the opening day of the Manchester Track World Cup in February 2011. Apart from the exhilaration of winning in such a fast time the event gave a hint of what the London 2012 Games will offer. ‘Racing in front of the Manchester crowd was an insight into next year in London,’ says Sarah. She did wonder what all the noise was while racing, though. ‘They sound like they are inside my aero helmet,’ she adds.

  Like Danielle Brown, Sarah made her own piece of history in Delhi the October before when she became the first Paralympic cyclist to compete against non-disabled athletes at the Commonwealth Games.

  The stories of Danielle Brown and Sarah Storey emphasise, if such emphasis is needed, how exceptionally talented world-beaters compete in Paralympic sport today. Danielle’s event is not featured in the Olympic Games, so she cannot cross the divide, leaving the focus and media pressure on Sarah Storey. But whatever happens between now and when the final selection is made, Paralympic sport is not about making comparisons. ‘I think if an athlete is capable of competing in both, that is great,’ observed Baroness Sue Campbell, Chair of UK Sport, ‘but we should judge the Paralympic Games for what it is, which is world-class athletes who have a disability. If some make the bridge across, then fantastic, but I don’t think we should see that as better or worse.’

  It’s certainly a view shared by Sarah Storey, who believes athletes who compete in the Paralympic Games are simply athletes who, through circumstance, have disabilities; the only difference is in the function of the limbs. It’s also a common misconception that athletes in the Paralympic Games have to try harder than athletes in the Olympic Games. ‘The option of doing the Olympic Games only came about because I have an event at those Games that isn’t available to me at the Paralympics,’ she says.

  In sport, reaching an Olympic or Paralympic Games is the goal all athletes strive for. To do so in one sport and win medals is inspirational enough. To achieve that in two as well as to strive to compete against non-disabled competition leaves its own mark no matter who is finally named in the British Olympic Cycling team for London 2012. Storey’s journey has shone a bright light on Paralympic Cycling and shown, whether now or in the near future, for Sarah or another rider of her calibre, the moment will surely come when a Paralympic cyclist clips into their pedals alongside an Olympic one. History really does beckon.

  Chapter Eight

  On Top of the World

  ‘Not in the clamour of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves
our triumph and defeat.’

  Henry Longfellow, poet

  Anybody who watches an event like the Paralympic Games will have a raft of questions they need answering. It doesn’t much matter whether the athlete is disabled or non-disabled, the enquiries are usually still the same. What does it take to win on one of the world’s biggest sporting stages? What’s it like to have years of hard work, dedication and physical stress come down to a single performance in an athlete’s life? How does it feel to go from having a few spectators turn up to watch your event one week to performing in front of thousands of cheering, autograph-seeking fans in state-of-the-art venues the next, when there is not a spare seat in the house?

  And what’s it like to do the one thing athletes the world over dream about day in, day out? To deliver the performance of a lifetime when it really counts and then to alight onto the highest step of the most famous multi-sport podium in the world, a gold medal dangling round your neck, to hear the national anthem played in honour of your achievement and the moment. What’s it like to win a televised global event and know the word ‘champion’ will be forever associated with your name?

  In fact athletes react differently to success and what viewers see on their television screens is only a small part of the story.