Weirwolf (21 page)

I honestly don’t know how some of the other Paralympic athletes keep going. It can only be through sheer hard work. That’s one of the reasons I have set up the Weir Archer Academy with Jenny to try to help develop the next
generation
. I was lucky to have parents who both had jobs and had the money to support me. But not everyone with talent is that lucky, so I want the academy to try to help young aspiring athletes who aren’t as lucky as I was.

The Weir Archer Academy officially opened on 6 April 2013. But it had been many years in the planning. After I came back from Beijing in 2008 I spoke to Jenny about doing something which would give disabled people the chance to play sport. I knew from my own experience how it had transformed my life. But I was also aware that it was hard for people to find the right facilities, kit and coaching. So Jenny and I started working on what a new academy for disability sport might look like. But for years it was
nothing
more than a pipe dream. All talk. I was so busy training and Jenny was so busy coaching me that it was another three years before it really started to take shape.

The fact that the dream has been realised is thanks in no small part to one of Jenny’s oldest friends and fellow coaches, Camilla Thrush. She sat us down one day and asked us to spell out exactly what it was we wanted to do. She knew us both well enough to understand that unless we set it up properly then it wouldn’t work. We would set out
with good intentions and try to mark out time to work with all these new athletes but in the end it would probably fail. It had to be set up as a well-planned business, with funding and support in place and a team of staff and coaches to run the place.

We never imagined it would become what it is today.

The academy covers ten different sports, including wheelchair rugby and tennis, boccia, football, badminton and volleyball. Although it was set up with athletics in mind, it’s not only about track and field. We recognise that to get more disabled people playing sport we have to create more opportunities in all sports.

We are hoping to support 5,500 people between the ages of ten and twenty-five in year one, rising to three times that number in 2016. It’s a huge undertaking and the sums of money involved are pretty big. We are looking to raise about £1.4 million to cover the coaching and staffing costs by year three.

A lot of that money is coming from grants from Sport England, the agency which distributes lottery funds for Olympic and Paralympic legacy projects, but also from the Greater London Authority and the governing bodies that run the sports we are supporting.

But the academy is also driving a big refurbishment of Kingsmeadow, where I have spent so many years training and working on my sporting career. It’s still in the design stages but I am hoping the £6.5 million project will leave us with new facilities and a sports centre dedicated to disabled sport.

A lot of the focus is inevitably on athletics and already we have seen a massive jump in numbers. In 2008 I was the only athlete Jenny coached. In 2012 she had eight. One year later, it’s thirty-six. Sometimes the athletes are spotted by Jenny or recommended by another coach. But the
majority
of the group are people who have sent us emails asking us to help them. We have also had a couple of open training sessions which have been far more popular than I imagined. This has shown me first-hand the impact of the Paralympics.

Although the ambition is to develop the stars of
tomorrow
, I am also a firm believer that disabled people should be able to take part in sport just for fun and to keep fit. That’s why the academy tries to help people of all abilities.

But I would really hope that by the time the Rio Paralympics come around in 2016 a few of the athletes from the academy are out there representing Great Britain. There are already some really promising athletes coming through: there’s Jamie Carter, a 100m sprinter from Lincoln, who finished sixth in the T34 final in London – his first Paralympics. But I also have high hopes for Will Smith, who already races for GB, and Abbie Hunnisett, a club thrower who is third in the country but fifth overall in the world. If you actually look at my classification, T54, the academy has eleven of the top fifteen in the country.

Graham Spencer is only twelve but he is already one of the best in Britain. In fact, because of the way the
classification
system works, there’s no minimum age requirement so he could actually race me now in competition.

The kids working with us now come from all over the country. The ones based in the south-east of England train with Jenny regularly on a Monday and Wednesday. Those from a bit further afield come down in the school holidays or at weekends. Jenny draws up a training programme for them and their parents to work with. She tells them what she told me all those years ago when she asked me to compete at the London Youth Games: ‘Talent will get you so far, but I am looking for something else … A bit of aggression and determination, something that marks you out from the rest. If you think this is going to be a fun factory, forget it.’

You see, the thing about Jenny is, she likes a challenge. She just gets such an amazing lift from helping kids fulfil their potential, regardless of where they come from or how much money they’ve got.

For me it’s hard to get along to the academy as much as I would like. Although I train at Kingsmeadow all the time, I can only really devote one day a month to it. I would like to do a lot more and perhaps when I do finally pack up I will dedicate more time to helping the next generation.

One of the big aims of the academy is to help physical education teachers in schools to do more for disabled kids, so they aren’t just sent to the library during games or PE lessons, as is so often the case. It’s also quite hard for
disabled
children to do PE qualifications. There isn’t that
understanding
in school, so we want to help the exam boards and schools learn how to assess people with disabilities.
My school understood the importance of sport to kids with disabilities but I am not always sure the mainstream schools get it. This academy didn’t start off as a large-scale legacy project but over the next few years I am sure it will play a big part in ensuring the afterglow from the Paralympics doesn’t just fade away.

After the Heroes Parade, I was finally able to get back home and to a bit of normality. Well, sort of. First I had a lads holiday in Ibiza to celebrate.

The truth is (and no one will believe me) I didn’t really want to go. Emily was heavily pregnant – the baby could have come any day. But she just wanted me to be with my friends and enjoy myself for a few days. She made me go! So ten of us set off on one of those awful crack-of-dawn flights to Ibiza for five days. I’m glad I did. For nearly
eighteen
months I had just been focused on one thing. I had put everything else in my life on hold. Now I could let my hair down a bit. It was nice to be recognised by people out there while we were in some of the bars and clubs. And it was great to get the VIP treatment. But all the time I was
phoning
home, worried that I might miss the birth.

In the end I was back in good time – but that’s not to say it was straightforward.

Tillia Grace London Weir was born at 11.30 p.m. on 7 October. In a new Weir record time of … twenty minutes.

Earlier that night we had gone up to St Helier Hospital because Emily had some pains. We waited for ages up there but the nurses said she wasn’t dilated and sent us back home. The minute we pulled up outside the house she said, ‘The baby is coming, the contractions have started.’ She told me to drive to the hospital as fast I could. Halfway back to the hospital she suddenly said, ‘Pull over. I think it’s stopped.’ I felt this wave of relief, and was just thinking about turning around when she started screaming again.

‘Drive, drive.’

It’s the nightmare you always thought would never happen to you. I was thinking, ‘How the hell am I going to deliver a baby in my car?’ So I was phoning the hospital trying to warn them and to get them to run the bath for the birth. Emily had hoped for a water birth, but in the end there was no time. As we rushed in I looked at the clock in the hospital reception. It had just gone 11 p.m. I did some calculations in my head and thought we would be out by 5 a.m. the next day.

After the midwife had checked Emily I asked her for a rough timing.

‘About twenty minutes.’

‘You have got to be joking?’ And I looked down at Emily and there was Tilly’s head already popping out. Before I knew it, she was here. No complications and no hitches. My beautiful baby girl. She was absolutely perfect and it felt like we had just popped to the shops and picked her up.

Coming up with the first part of our new arrival’s name
was no problem. Emily and I had agreed on Tillia Grace a few weeks earlier. But I also wanted a name which would always remind her – and us – of the very special year she came along. I toyed with Gold or Goldie. Or even Weirwolf! Poor girl, can you imagine how she would have got teased at school? In the end, the answer was obvious: London.

My head was still spinning when the nurses told us we would soon be able to go home. It was just gone midnight and by 2 a.m. we were back in our house. It was
unbelievable
. It normally takes me longer to get through a drugs test after one of my races. Taking Tilly home was so special. 2012 had been such an incredible year. First the Paralympics and now a new baby. But, very quickly, the golden memories of London had to be put to one side as it was back to sleepless nights and changing nappies. Things became so hectic that there was absolutely no time to sit back and reflect.

It wasn’t until Christmas and the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards that I started to look back again at what I had done during those magical ten days. I know Bradley Wiggins said I deserved to win but I was just honoured to be on that list of twelve incredible athletes. I was also very proud that Ellie Simmonds and Sarah Storey were on the list too. To have three Paralympians out of twelve was a major leap forward. To come fifth in such an incredible year with contenders like Sir Chris Hoy and Sir Ben Ainslie behind me was an extraordinary achievement. I do think a Paralympian will win it one year. I just hope the BBC put
us on there more regularly now we have made the
breakthrough
. It shouldn’t just be because the BBC feel there should be a disabled athlete.

Then there was the New Year’s Honours List. I know there was a bit of press that I was upset not to have got a knighthood. I don’t know where that came from. I was making the point that I wasn’t sure how the honours committee worked out who got what. But I was deeply honoured to get a CBE from the Queen. After all, I am only doing something I love. There are people who fight and die for their country and they don’t even get a look in. We are ultimately doing something for fun.

Getting motivated to compete again after what had happened to me in London was always going to feel like a drag. For months I felt like I was on one giant victory lap, shuttling from reception to reception, awards do to awards do. With Tilly’s arrival it left with me with no time to even think about racing or training. Besides, I was always going to take it easy over the winter, to let my body recuperate after the last couple of years.

By the spring of 2013 I was getting the itch to compete again. Fortunately, the London Marathon was just around the corner. After equalling Tanni Grey-Thompson’s record of six wins in 2012, I told my brother that would be my last race. But after Christmas I changed my mind. I just
wanted to see what it was like to be back on the streets of London. I wanted to know if the Paralympics really did change London and the country, if people would come out and cheer us. I was terrified it might all have been a one-off. Then there was the record. That seventh win. The one that would take me to a new level. Better even than the great Tanni Grey-Thompson. It was impossible to resist.

The build-up to that race was like nothing I had ever experienced before. The interest was massive. I had a news crew from Sky TV following me for eight weeks. And when I turned up on the Wednesday before the race at the marathon exhibition at the ExCeL Centre in London’s Docklands, I had to be sneaked in through the back door. Every year for the last decade I have rolled in through the front. But this time there were so many camera crews and people there, the organisers decided it would probably be better if I just slipped in quietly through a back entrance. My mate Ricky came up with me and he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. I don’t think of myself as famous but I suppose I am. You just forget, and there were so many people wanting pictures. Even in the main press conference on the Friday there were loads of new faces asking me
questions
. Some of the regulars were there, people I have got to know down the years, but this year it was packed. Every channel and every paper was there. How did it feel to be confronted by all this? At times I felt awkward and
uncomfortable
. At others, proud and relaxed. If I am honest, the whole thing was crazy.