Weirwolf (19 page)

It was also the night when the Weirwolf legend really took off. The whole thing started with the C4 presenter Rick
Edwards. He came up with the nickname on the Paralympic show a few years earlier. We were doing a competition with able-bodied guys who worked in the sports business. One was a body builder, one a lifeguard and one a gymnast. The challenge was for them to get in a racing chair and beat me over 100m. As a bit of a laugh, Rick gave everyone WWF wrestling-style nicknames. I think the bodyguard was called ‘The Unit’ and that was when he suggested calling me ‘Weirwolf’.

Then, during the Games, Rob, one of the team doctors, found an old song by a rock singer, Warren Zevon, called ‘Werewolves of London’. It wasn’t to my usual taste but it has a couple of funny lines like ‘There was a hairy-handed gent who ran amok in Kent’ and a catchy chorus you can howl along to. I have to admit I quite liked it and once Rob posted it online it took on a life of its own.

Before I knew it, it was all over the place and someone in the team had tracked down some werewolf masks from somewhere (God knows where in the middle of a Paralympic Games) and brought them down to the stadium for the final of the 800m. They even played the song in the stadium that night. I came to really like it. After all, Usain Bolt had the lightning bolt, Mo had the Mo-bot, Wiggo had his sideburns and mop top and now I was the Weirwolf. I have always loved the way British sport creates big characters.

I had to try not to get carried away with all the
excitement
and attention. The 800m was possibly the toughest
of all my track races in London and I planned to go for it from the start. To treat it as if it was a 400m race.

After the first bend I was level with Zhang Lixin, which was really good. I knew he would be the fastest so I just sat on his back wheel. Behind me there was a bad crash involving America’s Jordan Bird, my mate Josh Cassidy of Canada and the Frenchman Julien Casoli. It was quite a bad one and Julien didn’t finish in the end. Fortunately, I was out of trouble because Lixin was pushing quite hard.

It was only then that I noticed my zip had come down on my top and I was exposing my chest to the world. I have no idea what happened to it but all of a sudden the top was flapping around. I was thinking, ‘This isn’t very
aerodynamic
.’ All those days in wind tunnels testing helmets and your chair, only for your zip to break and slow you down. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t stop to do it up. I had to push through it.

I was feeling quite tired and drained but as we hit the final lap the roar went up. Lixin was pushing 22mph on the final bend and I was just praying he wasn’t going to go faster. I opened up off the back of the last bend and my speed stayed the same all the way down the home straight. Lixin started going backwards. He just faded as he hit the home straight but I felt I was never going to fade.

Then I was worried about Marcel. Normally you will see a wheel creeping up on your outside. But it didn’t happen. No one got near me.

People might think that after you win one or two golds,
the impact of another one doesn’t feel quite so special. I can assure you the opposite is true. It just feels better and better. If you look back at the replays of the finish and my victory lap, I cross the line and then start waving my arms around like a maniac, really enjoying the moment. Then all of a sudden I start fiddling with my top again, trying to fix it and pull the zip up. I know it might sound silly but I just felt a bit self-conscious. It took me ages to get a grip and do it up.

That was when I saw my mum and dad in the crowd, but I couldn’t get over to them. They were crying and everyone was turning to them. The nice thing about that is that they actually had tickets for much higher up and some other friends swapped with them so they could be closer to the track in case I won and they could get to see me
afterwards
. I know my mum and dad were so grateful for that, it was such a nice gesture. My mum asked me afterwards if I couldn’t see them. She said my eyes were just black, as if I was in another world. It was a surreal moment. I kept wondering if I was ever going to wake up. I eventually got over to them, but I only had seconds because the officials were rushing us on. They were hassling me to get over to the mixed zone to do my interviews. That was actually the first time I spotted the group of team members wearing the werewolf masks. At one point my Welsh teammate Aled Davies took his mask off. When he did I could see he was in tears. It was a very touching moment – to see your own teammates so moved by what you had achieved.

It was such an extraordinary night to be involved in. Before I raced, Hannah had already won gold in the 200m, and I was still talking to the cameras in the mixed zone at the side of the track when Jonnie Peacock won in the 100m – against Oscar Pistorius. There had been so much hype and attention over the previous couple of days. He was only nineteen, and he must have felt under enormous pressure.

And then there was a false start. If that had been me at his age I would have been a bag of nerves. But he raised a finger to his lips and
SSSSHHHHHDDDD
the crowd. I was very impressed. He could have gone to pieces. The crowd was shouting his name over and over again. I knew at that point we had really captured the imagination of this public.

Jonnie’s race was the only race I watched live in the whole Games. I just so wanted to watch a British athlete wipe the floor with Oscar. He was the world record holder, under pressure. To see Jonnie cross that line and see him overwhelmed and elated was just brilliant.

We both got our medals that night and while we were waiting we gave each other a big hug.

I got my medal from the comedian Eddie Izzard. He just said, ‘Bloody brilliant.’ And then singing the national anthem for a third time in that stadium – everyone joining in, belting it out with such pride. I never got bored of it.

I didn’t even get drug tested so I didn’t spend the next three hours sitting in a room waiting to pee. A lot of people might find it surprising that the winner of a Paralympic
gold medal didn’t get automatically drug tested. But the anti-doping officials said there was no point – I had already been tested three times since the Games started, once in the village when I arrived and then after the 5,000m and the 1,500m.

So far I haven’t come across performance-enhancing drugs in wheelchair racing. That doesn’t mean I haven’t come across suspicion. Back in 2006 and 2007, when I was breaking world records, I knew people would be asking themselves how I was doing it. But it was just pure training. And besides, I am probably the most tested athlete in Paralympic sport. During the 2006 World Championships I was tested two or three times a day.

I actually welcome that. The more you are tested the better, as far as I am concerned, because it shows you aren’t on drugs. That’s not to say the system is perfect. Far from it. You can figure it out. If I went on a training camp they would test me before I went or when I came back. Sometimes both. A week before the marathon I would always get tested and then in the marathon itself. Leading into a big
championships
I would get tested two or three times.

I don’t think that’s enough and it’s too predictable. But the thing that really annoys me is the lack of consistency. Every single country that competes in the Olympics and Paralympics should do the same level of testing as us. Then it would be fair. America, Canada, Australia – they do it. But lots don’t have the systems in place. And I know what WADA (the World Anti-Doping Agency) and the other
anti-doping agencies will say: lots of smaller countries don’t have the money. Well, WADA should take it on, then. They must have the money.

Having said that, I do think most Paralympians are clean. And in wheelchair racing we are, on the whole, honest people who love racing each other. There are always other ways to improve that 1 or 2 per cent: technology and good diet – like the cycling team has done for years and years. There are alternative ways to putting dope in your system.

When you are seeing all these athletes getting caught in the Olympics, it makes me angry. And I do think the Olympics are dirtier than the Paralympics. Maybe there’s more at stake, greater competition.

I know some people are suspicious of the Paralympians because a lot of the athletes have to take medication. But what can they do? As long as they aren’t using them to cheat.

For once I was back to my room nice and early. But, irritatingly, I couldn’t sleep. I was still up at 4 a.m. I might as well have done a drugs test. I just couldn’t drop off. So I got my London 2012 duvet from my bed, went into the living room and sat on the sofa watching the BBC news channel. For the first time in a week, I didn’t have anything to do the next day – or the day after. That was perhaps why I was still wide awake, buzzing from probably the most incredible night British Paralympic sport has ever seen.

I was so exhausted when I woke up on Friday morning. Part of me felt that my job was done. But I so wanted that marathon. I now had two complete days of rest to try and rebuild my strength for that race.

Later that day I was meeting Emily and Mason in the family zone at Team GB House, Westfield. It was the first time I had done that during the whole Games. She got lost, bless her, and she was quite upset about it all, especially being pregnant. She got off at the wrong tube stop.

Once she met me she was OK. She had been so anxious to see me – it was more than two weeks since we had been together. She said she was worried I might have to rush off for some reason. But I reassured her that I would be
spending
the whole day with her. It was so good to see my little boy. He had started walking on his first birthday, about six weeks earlier, so he was tottering around GB House. Emily had asked me to bring my medals with me to show them off. I opened the bag and took them out and put them on the table. She picked them up and put them on. And then she said, ‘Now for number four, Dave.’

I didn’t say anything but in my mind I was thinking, ‘I am so tired.’ I just said I would give it my best shot.

Then she proceeded to tell me about how I was
everywhere
and how everyone on the estate was talking about me. I couldn’t believe the number of people who were
planning
to come up to town for the marathon.

By this point she was really showing with Tilly. She only had a month to go. But throughout the Games I was worried the baby might come early. Mason had. I was always ringing home to make sure Emily was OK. I felt like I should have been there and helping but this was a
once-in
-a-lifetime thing.

When it came time to say goodbye to her and Mason it was really tough, but I only had two more days to go so that kept me going. Having had such a horrible journey across London I made sure she didn’t get a train back this time. The security guard who was looking after me took her down to where she could get a black cab to take her all the way back. I gave her £60 or £70 to get home.

I then headed back to the village, got a bit of dinner and crashed out.

I still felt really tired and drained. By this point it was too late to pull out of the marathon. At lunchtime all those doing the marathons had to pack up and move to a hotel around the corner from St James’s Park. It was strange to be out of the village. I spent most of the afternoon checking my chair – making sure my tyres were road ones and that everything was set up just right for the 26.2-mile course. The weather was really hot and I was anticipating having to compete in temperatures above 27 degrees. Suddenly I was glad I had done all that work in the sweltering heat of Portugal in July. It was going to come in handy.

But because it was going to be so hot, it left me with a bit of a dilemma about what to wear. I’d had a short-sleeved suit made for me but up until this point I had worn my long-sleeved one and it didn’t feel right to change anything that had been working.

I felt good when I woke up, much better than the previous two days. This was new territory for me, though, and it was quite strange to deal with from a psychological point of view. Normally at this stage my work was done but now I had to get myself going for one more race day. And not any old race: the biggest of them all.

Because we were staying just around the corner from the start and finish line I decided to put all my kit and spare parts on a bus and push myself down to the start in my chair. Just before going to line up I popped into the official organisers’ tent. It was there I bumped into my hero Heinz Frei. He was competing in the marathon too, but this was the first time I had seen him because he had been doing hand cycling at Brands Hatch for the rest of the Games. It was such a good moment to see the man who had convinced me to take up the sport as a kid. He congratulated me on what I had achieved and told me he thought I was amazing. To hear that from him was such an honour. It gave me such an enormous lift.

I had studied the marathon course quite a bit over the previous few days. I got a DVD and zoned in on the sections
of the course that looked tricky. They were all stored in the memory bank.

The race started with a small loop of about 2 miles. It didn’t go off that quick and by the time it came back around to the point by Buckingham Palace where all my friends and family were, I had enough time to hear them yelling me on. I could also see all the werewolf masks in the crowd. It was an incredible feeling to know that all these people were screaming and shouting for me.

But after about 3 miles it started to go wrong. I just lost the plot. I felt like I was dying. For a while I seriously considered just pulling over to the side and giving up. But something inside me told me not to. I had to grit my teeth and get through this bad patch. I couldn’t let the crowd down and I didn’t want to let myself down. This was the race I wanted to win the most. But the loss of energy seemed to go on for a lifetime.