Weirwolf (14 page)

Before I left Jenny had another word with Peter. She talked him through the programme she had set up for me and told him that she wanted him – and only him – to look after me. I think she wanted to see if he would try to adapt it or put his own stamp on it. When he came to look at it, I could see that he thought it wasn’t going to work. But at that stage he had only ever come to see me train once and that was when he had just got the job in 2009. He didn’t know anything about the intensity I put into my training sessions.

After the first couple of days in Auckland he could see it was working. I was getting fitter and fitter each day. By the end of the week my confidence was starting to grow. I was starting to feel like I might have a chance of actually winning something.

Suddenly the team psychologist Sarah Cecil was back. She came to my room in Auckland, sat on my floor and tried to start a conversation with me. I was having none of it. ‘Can I help you?’ I asked her, my surly tone impossible to miss.

She asked how I was feeling but I just didn’t want to play ball. It just didn’t feel right and all the time I was just thinking that she was going to feed whatever I told her
back to Peter. I know these days modern sport is full of scientists, medics and motivational specialists but maybe I am just a bit old fashioned. I didn’t trust the situation. Deep down I knew what I wanted to say: I was angry. And I was scared. Scared of coming home empty handed. Scared of piling even more pressure on my shoulders. Rightly or wrongly, I felt like I was the biggest name in the men’s Paralympics team going into London. If I didn’t win at the World Championships then I was putting myself up there to be shot at.

After a good week or so training in Auckland we moved from the North Island to the South and the beautiful host city of Christchurch. The World Championships had never been staged outside Europe before – never mind in the
far-flung
southern hemisphere. Even though my build-up had been pretty disastrous, it was exciting to be on the other side of the world competing at such a big event. The British team arrived in high spirits.

None of us could have expected what we would watch unfold on our TV screens just three weeks after we left. In the middle of February an enormous earthquake,
measuring
6.3 on the Richter scale, tore through the city killing 185 people, destroying buildings and even ripping up the track on which we raced. Even when we were there in
mid-January
I felt what people told me were just minor tremors. To me, some of them felt quite powerful and left me feeling quite rough. One day I came out of the shower and I could see the building opposite actually moving. It was a really
weird feeling but, although I felt a bit unsure, everyone reassured me that it was normal and there was never any talk of cancelling the championships. But I kept thinking, ‘What if it happens when we’re competing?’ My heart goes out to all the people who were caught up in that tragedy. We were so lucky to get out when we did.

When it came to the racing, I saw Christchurch as a bit of a dry run for London. I targeted the four events I would race for in 2012 – the 800m, 1,500m, 5,000m and the marathon. It was madness, really, when you think about it. The cortisone injection was only masking the deeper problems with my shoulder. If I were to stand any chance then I had to get off to a winning start. I also knew I had to adapt my racing. I had to be much smarter about timing my attacks. In the past I had always panicked whenever one of the other big guns hit the front. Here I would have to be more intelligent and save my energy for when it really counted.

The 800m was first up. I just scraped through the heats but in the final I felt good. My nemesis, Marcel Hug, was leading with 120 metres to go, but as we came off the final bend I went for it. I came out of his slipstream and took him on. It was neck and neck down the home straight but somehow I found my Beijing speed and just pipped him on the line. I had kept enough in reserve to beat him. The win gave me such a lift – it was so unexpected that I thought I didn’t have anything to lose now. In the 1,500m I played the same waiting game, sitting on Marcel’s tail until the last
bend and then going for the front. I could see by the look on his face when I glanced back that it ruined him. This time I won by a good chair’s length.

With two golds already in the bag I approached the 5,000m with a bit more trepidation. I knew my lack of stamina wouldn’t show up in the two middle-distance events but in the longer races I thought I might still struggle. Again, my waiting tactics paid off. I tried to conserve as much energy as possible, only using my pace and covering breaks when I really had to. I just stayed in touch and as we went into the last lap I was sat nicely on Prawat Wahoram’s back wheel. With about 300 metres to go I upped the pace, taking the Thai athlete on, and hitting the front off the final bend. I raised my arms in jubilation as I crossed the line to claim my third gold of the Championships. I couldn’t believe it. I went to New Zealand expecting – fearing – I would come away with nothing. But I got three golds, the same as in Assen in 2006. What was more satisfying this time was the way I had raced, conserving my energy and staying calm.

At that point I was already thinking the marathon might be a race too far. I only had a day and a half to recover and I was dreading the prospect of 26 miles. Fortunately, my mind was made up for me. Amazingly, the International Paralympic Committee forgot to apply for a licence to close the roads around Christchurch. It was absolutely
unbelievable
. The minute I heard there would be cars on the roads, I pulled out. It was embarrassing and dangerous. Would this
have happened in an able-bodied World Championships? They had marshals but they couldn’t guarantee athletes would be safe. In fact, when the race took place a car pulled off a drive as the wheelchair athletes were going past and nearly hit some of them.

Peter Eriksson had found out about all this the night before the marathon but didn’t tell me until 5 a.m. on the day of the race. I was annoyed at the time because I could have gone out and celebrated with some of my teammates. But I was angrier at the IPC. Again, I felt they weren’t running these events properly. The crowds in Christchurch were like those in Atlanta – hardly anyone turned up and it just wasn’t promoted properly. I told the IPC their mistake had potentially cost me and Great Britain another medal. It was ridiculous. They knew when the Championships were happening. Why didn’t they think to apply for a licence?

Despite that unsatisfactory ending, New Zealand had still been a brilliant World Championships for me. After we got back to London, I called Peter and sent him an email apologising for the way I had behaved before we left. I admitted I had been out of order but said I had been
frightened
. I thought we might start to get on a bit better. But things soon started to go downhill again.

After a couple of weeks of rest I was soon back training at Lee Valley. But it didn’t take long before I was feeling like a second-class citizen again. It was so frustrating. I just wasn’t getting the same treatment as the able-bodied athletes. I used to sit there and wonder if this was really
happening. Am I not a world-class athlete? Have I not just won three gold medals at a World Championships? I really wanted to start working with a dedicated strength and conditioning coach, but I was being told I might have to wait until September. I couldn’t understand it. There were loads of coaches in the gym but none of them could find the time to work with me for an hour. When I raised it with anyone at UKA they just brushed it off or denied it was even happening. But I knew what was going on. I tried to make it work and I had tried to draw a line under the row with Peter but now things just deteriorated. I lost all respect for him.

New York and New Zealand had strained our
relationship
to breaking point. Now the more familiar city of Birmingham would provide the setting for our third big disagreement. I had actually started the season quite well. My Christmas-time cortisone was still doing the business and I won the London Marathon for a fifth time in April. But by June my injection had worn off and my right
shoulder
was injured again. The doctors tried the same trick again, sending me for a second cortisone injection, and, this time, telling me to rest completely. The only thing on the horizon was a Diamond League event in Birmingham. With the doctor’s advice ringing in my ears, I decided to pull out.

Next thing I know, Peter is on the phone to Jenny, asking if I can compete after all. She refused, explaining what the doctors had told me. To this day I still don’t understand why he asked me to compete when he knew I was injured.
It really shook my confidence in him as a coach. It was
definitely
a new low point.

Maybe a lot of the problems with Peter stemmed from the fact that he didn’t coach me personally, that Jenny was the person I had complete faith in. Apart from Mickey Bushell and Jade Jones, all the other British wheelchair athletes were in his camp. I understood where he was coming from – after all, wheelchair racing was what he knew. And he was pretty good at the coaching. But when one of your athletes has a world-class coach then, in my view, the job of a performance director is to work with that coach and to support them. Not to bypass them.

Shelly Woods was a good example. Her old coach Pete Wyman guided her to a world record in 2010 but he was soon dumped afterwards for Peter. Put simply, I thought Peter was a bully. There was always the prospect of
withdrawing
funding and interfering too much and Peter was the UKA’s mouthpiece. It pissed me off because he didn’t seem to respect what Jenny had done. She was very, very disappointed because he had seen me train only once, so how could he possibly judge the programme we had
developed
– and, importantly, the programme that had brought me and Great Britain so much success?

For me, Peter’s appointment summed up this pointless trend of hiring expensive foreign coaches and I thought it a total waste of money. We have good people here – in Scotland, Liverpool and London. We should develop that coaching talent. I didn’t like it when it started happening
with the England football team, first with Sven-Göran Eriksson and then with Fabio Capello. For me, it’s the same in any sport and as an athlete I was always asking myself where their loyalties really lie. I remember there was a Swiss physio who worked with the British team, and I once noticed them cheering for Marcel Hug in a race. Peter was to deliver for the British Paralympic Team but it didn’t feel like that to an outsider at the time.

With one year to go to London, the time had come for decisive action. My shoulder needed urgent treatment and it just wasn’t working for me at Lee Valley. I knew that if I was going to fulfil my 2012 ambitions then I would have to go my own way. So, in September, I told UKA I was going back to St Mary’s – full time.

The two guys who saved me were my physio, Nick Cooper, and my strength and conditioning coach, Paul Martin. Without them, I doubt I would have achieved what I did in London. I had already chatted to them before I made my decision to leave Lee Valley. I told them I had one year to go and that I was in a mess. Until I got my
shoulder
fixed I knew I wouldn’t be able to train properly. I was desperate for their help.

The problem was that no one was going to pay them. Although St Mary’s is part of the English Institute of Sport, UKA told them they weren’t prepared to support me
financially
if I decided to seek alternative back-up away from Lee Valley. It was ridiculous. They were telling me they couldn’t afford £30 or £40 for an hour with the best physio I had
ever worked with. I asked Peter about it and he said he had no problem with me working out of St Mary’s. But then when it came to finding the money, it just didn’t happen.

In the end I said I would just fund it out of my own pocket. By this stage it was just too important. At the same time, Paul said the college and the English Institute of Sport were prepared to let him treat me in his lunch hour. But what I couldn’t understand was why some of the other able-bodied athletes down at St Mary’s seemed to be getting their coaching and treatment paid for through official channels. They didn’t seem to be sneaking around, twisting people’s arms to help them in their lunch breaks. Whenever Mo Farah was back from America, where he now spends most of his time, he was at St Mary’s. You can bet there were no questions about the support he was getting down there. Plus I knew for a fact that other injured athletes like Steph Twell were told they could give Lee Valley a miss and carry on working on their rehabilitation at St Mary’s. Once again I felt second best.

There were a lot of politics involved and I suspected Peter of being behind most of the problems. So I told him to come down to St Mary’s and have a look at the set-up. He’d only been to see me train once and that was almost three years earlier. He’d been to see most of the other athletes, but not me. Eventually, he did come down and have a look. I thought he had been persuaded, that he had been impressed. That was certainly the message which came across before he left. It was only a short while
afterwards when I was chatting to one of the physios at Lee Valley that she mentioned that the visit hadn’t gone well. I genuinely thought Peter was about to sign off funding for me at St Mary’s. Instead it turned out Jenny had received an email from Peter questioning the set-up. He said he was worried about my technique and my position in the chair. That really got up my nose. He had only come to see me once and there he was criticising me. But this was the
position
I had always used. It had always served me well. I was totally pissed off.

It made me more determined than ever to just get on and do my own thing. When I went back to Paul and Nick at St Mary’s, I couldn’t even pick up the bench bar because my range was so limited. I thought I was going to have a poor winter because I couldn’t lift any weights, but Paul
reassured
me immediately, telling me not to worry and that in a couple of months I would be lifting weights again. He also told me that he had cringed when he saw I had been given a second cortisone injection. I guess that’s why he wanted to help me: he could see I was getting bad advice.