Weirwolf (8 page)

Throughout Kaylie’s pregnancy with Ronie – and Emily’s two with Mason and Tilly – I was always asking the midwife to do checks to see if the baby’s spine was OK. It was always fine but with each of my children I have been worried sick that the doctors might have missed something. Until I can see with my own eyes that they are fine then I just don’t believe it. I just didn’t want any of my children to have anything wrong with them.

It was even worse with Mason. It’s hard to explain but it is different with boys. Having a son is always special for the dad but I worried more that Mason might have problems. I just wanted him to be running around. Because I could always see that in my mum and dad’s eyes. They probably wished I had been given that chance to run around – not just for them, but for me. Now when I see Mason running and jumping I can’t contain my delight and relief. It’s the same with all three of them. It just puts a smile on my
face. Whenever Ronie and Mason come down to the track together and they start playing I just sit there and watch, trying to appreciate how lucky I am to have kids without any disabilities. As I watch Mason, my little boy, I imagine that’s me, running around.

Of course that’s not the end of the worries. If only. My fear now is, what if their kids are disabled? What if it skips a generation? If you look at me and Paul there has got to be something on my mum’s side. You just don’t know how the genes may be passed on down the generations. My case might have just been bad luck. I hope so because I would be devastated if it happened to my children as parents.

Coping with Ronie’s arrival wasn’t too bad. We both adjusted pretty well to being young parents. Like most people, we didn’t have enough money and it was a bit of a struggle. But we made do and she certainly didn’t go without.

Sometimes it was tough, especially in the first two months. All the screaming and sleepless nights. When you are not used to it and you have been doing double training sessions it’s really hard. But you just deal with it. And I never let it affect my training. After a while Ronie started to sleep through the night and things started to settle down. It was only a year to Athens and I had to get my qualifying times that summer.

After the World Championships in Lille, Jenny told me to keep training and working hard. So, having calmed down after the disappointment of coming fourth twice, that’s
exactly what I did. I changed a few things in the winter and I trained really hard. I had to accept that on this long road to the top I might have to get used to coming fourth and fifth before I could make the big breakthrough. That winter I worked tirelessly on my sprinting. I prioritised that over the London Marathon that year, which explains why I wasn’t able to defend my title. But it paid dividends when the track season came around. I got my qualifying standards for Athens in the summer of 2003. Getting to Athens was the only thing I was focused on. I kept the
painful
experience of watching Sydney on the TV as my main motivation, the driving force behind my dreams.

As the Games got closer and closer I remember all the media focus was on the Greeks’ preparations. Would they be ready in time? Was it going to be a shambles? But I didn’t care about all that. I just wanted to get there and race – whatever state Athens was in. The call eventually came in July from Ian Thompson, head of the British athletics team. He told me I had been selected because of my form and performances over the last two years. This was an incredible moment for me. Ever since I had turned my back on the sport, deep down I had doubted whether I would get another chance to go to a Paralympic Games. It’s one of the great contradictions of elite sportsmen and women. Confidence is such a big part of success and when I am out on the track I am totally in control, completely sure of myself. But away from the heat of battle it’s a never-ending struggle against my own mind. My fears and doubts. They are always there
and, having gone through the worst few years of my young life, I wasn’t sure I would get my second chance.

Before the Games started the British team flew off to Cyprus for a training camp. We had about three weeks left to fine-tune our preparations, to fix any last-minute problems and to acclimatise to the heat of the late Greek summer. In keeping with the shoddy image of the Athens Games, the track we were supposed to use in Nicosia wasn’t ready – I don’t know why, but it was a real shame. So we ended up using this rubbish track in Paphos. It was way too soft and I had to change all my training plans by switching to the road instead, something I really didn’t want to do just before my first Paralympics for eight years.

Fortunately, I was flying in training. Jenny had been timing me in the sessions. She refused to tell me how fast I was going – she didn’t want me to get complacent. While it tears me apart inside, she knows a few self-doubts are good for me in the long run. They make me work even harder. But I just had this feeling I was going well, that I was ready.

Watching the Olympics earlier in the summer had given me a taste of what to expect when we arrived in the Greek capital. By this time the bigger worries about the venues and the transport had gone away. OK, so it was a bit rough and ready around the edges but the history of the place more than made up for that. Everywhere you looked there was some ancient ruin or other and it was a genuine privilege to be competing in a Games where the Olympic ideal had been born. I thought the place was very special.

In the village there was a great atmosphere, such a contrast to my first experience in Atlanta. The Greeks treated us really well. It was a bit of a journey from the village to the stadium but as long as you planned it well, it wasn’t too much of a problem. The food was great compared to Atlanta and for me that made a massive
difference
. The track in the village was first class and there was a 50-metre pool to play in. They did a decent job. The rooms were pretty good and I was sharing with Lloyd Upsdell, a cerebral palsy athlete who’d won two golds in Sydney four years earlier. He was from Essex, so, as you might imagine, there was a fair bit of banter. We had a laugh and looked after each other. He was a good teammate and I missed him when he retired from the sport.

The only disappointment was the size of the crowds. Again, as with Atlanta, the IPC and the organisers had not promoted the Paralympics properly. It was obvious the Greeks just weren’t into it in the same way as the Australian public had been in Sydney in 2000. But the IPC didn’t help themselves by scheduling big races – like the blue riband event, the 1,500m – at nine in the morning. How do they expect people to come out and support Paralympic sport, especially in a country known to be lukewarm to anything other than football and basketball? You don’t do that. You put it at prime time in the evening. I will never understand how the IPC comes to make these decisions. They don’t talk to athletes. But this time I wasn’t going to let it ruin my experience. I had grown up a lot over the last eight years
and with London’s bid for the 2012 Games already under way, I was confident future Paralympics could and would be different.

On the start line of the qualifying heat for the 200m my heart was racing so fast that when the announcer called out my name my GB vest was throbbing.

I ignored the rows of empty seats. ‘Who cares?’ I thought. ‘This is my moment and I am going to make the most of it.’

Afterwards, when I looked at the time, it was the second fastest in qualifying. Suddenly a medal was realistic. This was a game changer.

In the final I was nervous – really nervous. Eight years ago I had tasted what it was like to be in a Paralympic final and I had been happy not to come last. Now, suddenly, I was in with a chance of getting on the podium, of winning my first medal. Realistically, I knew I would struggle to win gold, but if I could just stay in contention with the big guns I might be in the mix.

When the starter went off, everything went perfectly. As I expected, Leo-Pekka Tähti was too fast and won in world-record time. Kenny van Weeghel of Holland came second, but I managed to hold on for bronze. That was all I wanted. My first real taste of success. That night, I was so excited I couldn’t sleep. I just kept looking at the medal, reliving the race and the moment on the podium.

After I got back to the village I was on the phone for hours talking to my family. No mobiles in those days: I had to buy a phone card and go and use the public phone.

The problem was that next morning I had my heats for the 400m. I didn’t even qualify. I was just so tired and exhausted. But I was so happy. Ever since I went off the rails I had imagined how it would feel to hold a Paralympic medal in my hands. Now, to have that sense of
achievement
was better than taking any recreational drug. All the goings-on over the previous few years just vanished. But, like any drug, success leaves you wanting more.

My experience in the 400m had been a blow but at least I had another chance to make amends in the 100m. Jenny told me to forget about what had happened; she said I had simply got overexcited. I hadn’t expected to get a medal so it was totally understandable. She is so good like that, putting everything into perspective, especially when you are worried you might have let yourself down. Then she told me the truth about how fast I had been going in training. I thought the 100m was my weakest event. But she was the one with the stopwatch and she saw a very different athlete to the one I had in my head. It was a great tactic, to wait until the last couple of days before the heats and then give me that lift by telling me how fast I had been going over the distance in training.

Normally, once you are in a big competition like a Paralympics you don’t tend to lift heavy weights. But I just wanted to do a little session before the 100m. Just like for the able-bodied sprinters, psychology over the short,
explosive
sprint races is massively important. If you look ripped and your arm muscles are bulging on the start line then it
can help put a doubt in your opponents’ minds. Jenny was a bit unsure. She was worried I might do myself some harm. So I was restricted to just twenty minutes in the gym. But it gave me such a boost. It was a little thing but it made such a big difference to my confidence.

When it came to the night of the heats I was watching the early rounds from the tunnel in the stadium. Each race was over in fourteen seconds but it felt like a lifetime. As each heat passed so a new Paralympic record was being set. Everyone was flying. I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, what have I got to do to even get to the second round?’

When I crossed the line in my heat I couldn’t believe it. I smashed the Paralympic record. I was the fastest out of everyone.

‘Oh my God, what have I just done?’

What an achievement – my first major record. 14.16 seconds. Now I was really pumped. I came through the semi-final and booked my place in the final alongside the best sprinters in the world. I was in lane four, next to my old roommate from Atlanta, Dave Holding. He was
thirty-five
now and in his last Games. But even his presence didn’t calm my nerves. I was absolutely terrified. Two false starts helped. Most sprinters don’t like them as it puts them on edge, slows them down. But I like them. I am not the best starter in the world so anything which keeps me in
contention
in the early stages of the race gives me a chance when my power and top-end speed come into play towards the finish line. I rolled back slowly. I remember thinking, ‘Don’t
go off too fast.’ The gun went and I absolutely nailed it. I crossed the line in second place, winning my first silver medal. To be just one away from gold – it was such an honour for me. Athens will always have a special place in my heart because it was all so new, so unexpected. I am not normally one for keeping memorabilia or collecting stuff but I have kept a lot of things from 2004.

I was so grateful to Jenny. It was a massive achievement and she had done so much to help me turn things around. I had gone to Athens just to be part of the British set-up once more, to repay people I had let down back in 1998 when I didn’t show up for the World Championships. To come out of those dark days and be there, I felt like I had done myself justice. I felt very lucky and felt as if I had angels around me looking after me. When I was on the podium getting those two medals I just kept thanking everyone in my mind – my parents, Jenny, my brothers and now my little girl, Ronie. My mum and dad were obviously bursting with pride. My mates arranged a huge party when I returned, at the Windmill, the local pub on Roundshaw. It was such a shock to me, I didn’t expect it at all. But to share my success with all the people I had grown up with, and on the estate, who had always supported me was really special. Now it is my regular celebration venue whenever the all-conquering hero returns from the Games.

Athens had not reaffirmed my faith in the Paralympics, but it had shown me what I could achieve if I put my mind to it. I had come close to squandering my talent. I could
have thrown it all away for a life drifting around and being angry at my fate. Instead, I felt like I was the lucky one. The one with the gift. The Games convinced me I had been right to go back to racing and to get myself straight. But very soon after I returned, my mind was already turning to the next goal and the next four years. Even though sprinting had brought me my first real taste of success I didn’t want to carry on over those distances. I wanted a bigger
challenge
, I wanted to really push myself. And now I wanted to taste what it was like to win gold.

A
ny athlete, able bodied or disabled, will tell you that medals are all that matter. That winning is what really counts. But breaking world records? Well, that’s a totally different buzz. Addictive. Infectious. Until you’ve done it, it’s hard to explain. But once you’ve got one world record under your belt, you want to keep breaking them, pushing the boundaries and setting new standards.

This was the phase my career was now entering as I emerged from Athens a more rounded and confident athlete. I felt I had put my past firmly behind me. I had done my growing up. Now I was ready to really take on the world, to push on and see how far – and how fast – I could go.

I also had the ultimate incentive. On 6 July 2005 Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), uttered the words that would change my life forever.

‘And the Games of the 30th Olympiad in 2012 are awarded to the city of … London.’

A home Games: the ultimate incentive. After a two-year campaign which culminated in a meeting of the IOC in Singapore, London had won. We had seen off favourites Paris and serious contenders Madrid. What had seemed like a long shot had suddenly become very real. The Paralympics would be happening in my home town.

Most people were crowded around TVs and radios waiting for the announcement, but not me. I had been competing in Switzerland and was waiting for a flight back to London when the news was relayed over the airport Tannoy system. It felt strange being away at such a big moment for the country – it just made me want to get home even faster. When I eventually did see a TV report I
remember
seeing Danny Crates, my Paralympic teammate, going nuts at a big event in Trafalgar Square after the decision. They kept playing it back again and again. It was hilarious. Then there were the great scenes from Singapore – Seb Coe and Ken Livingstone looking slightly stunned, Tanni
Grey-Thompson
being hugged by Sir Keith Mills, and Becks just beaming. At that moment my training went up a gear. I had the biggest incentive to do well and I knew that if I got my training right and worked hard I would be coming into my peak.

I am such a proud Brit – I guess it comes from my dad’s army days when he served in the Irish Guards – so to host the Olympics and Paralympics meant the world to me. We had to get it right. We couldn’t screw it up.

With London 2012 acting as a new motivational force,
the next two years saw a transformation in my racing career. I set new world records in the 800m, 5,000m and – most precious of all – the 1,500m, the blue riband of wheelchair racing. It was an incredible time, a period of my career I thought I would never better.

After winning my first Paralympic medals in Athens I was the man to watch on the circuit. I now had two years to get ready for the 2006 World Championships in the Dutch town of Assen. The year after Athens was pretty laid-back. I had worked so hard to get to the Games that I figured I could take my foot off the pedal for a year. But come the winter I was ready to get back into my training. I was desperate to move on from the sprint events and into the tougher, more tactical territory of middle-distance racing.

For the one and only time in my career, the set-up at UK Athletics (UKA), the sport’s governing body, worked for me rather than against me. The Australian Kathryn Periac had become the performance manager for wheelchair athletes at UKA, a move I was really pleased with. She was a former athlete herself and knew I had been through a lot of problems in the past with UKA. They didn’t believe in me and hadn’t helped me and Jenny. In our first meeting I told her everything and explained how I wanted to move up to the middle distances. She said, ‘OK, I will fund you,’ but asked that I leave the door open for some of the sprinting events. I agreed. It was such a breath of fresh air and the start of the best period I enjoyed with UKA. Overseeing it all was Tim Jones, who was an amazing manager, and working
with Kathryn was Pete Wyman, brought in as the head coach for wheelchair athletes. He was a former runner and understood the sport inside out. He got round all the top athletes, asking how he and UKA could help. But he never interfered with Jenny and the way we worked together. He let Jenny get on with it. It was exactly the set-up I needed. But trying to deliver on that commitment to carry on in the sprints and move on to the middle distances I wanted to compete in was not going to be easy. Fortunately, I was in the form of my life.

2006 was my invincible year. I was simply unbeatable. And in that sort of shape, world records were going to fall.

The first two of my career came in one very special night, in Ibach in Switzerland. It was high up in the mountains and I remember it was absolutely perfect conditions: really high, thin clouds and no wind or rain. I was going for the 400m and the 200m and my training had been going really well but in the longer distance I knew I always died in the last few metres. Jenny and I had worked really hard on getting it right. So when the race started I knew I was going to break the world record. Just looking at the speedometer on my chair I knew I was flying – I was doing 21mph on the straights.

As I crossed the line I looked over at the clock: 46.89 seconds – my first world record. I remember Tanni was there and she was so made up. You could see in her eyes how excited she was. I didn’t have a phone and I wanted to call Jenny so Tanni lent me hers so I could break the news
to her. She was obviously delighted but it was a brief call as I had to go and get ready for the 200m.

And an hour or so later I smashed the 200m world record as well. I have never been near those times since. It was just a perfect day. No one had been under 25 seconds in the 200m for six years. It was unreal. I just couldn’t believe it was happening to me. The fastest man in the world? I saw the change among my rivals: instant respect. What made it even more satisfying was that I didn’t even want the 200m. I didn’t think it was a good event for me.

The 1,500m was the one I really wanted. That summer I started racing over the distance and I was rewriting the rulebook. The races always used to start and build up slowly. But I went from the off. And all the regulars over the distance weren’t used to that. Soon I was going under three minutes and I knew that when that happened it was only a matter of time until that world record was mine. I was getting stronger and stronger. The other guys could see how much I was improving. They knew it wasn’t a fluke. Stepping up the distances suited me.

But for all my record-breaking exploits, hardly anyone was paying attention. No wheelchair racer expects to get the same attention as when Seb Coe broke his three world records inside forty-one days back in 1979, but you would think it might get a mention in one of the papers. My friends and family obviously knew and were made up, but the public had no idea. It was a bit frustrating. I was really making a name for myself and yet I didn’t have any
big sponsors and I was on B funding – the lower level of National Lottery support – because I still hadn’t won a gold medal.

When I broke the 200m and 400m world records in Switzerland that day, you know what I won? A Swiss army knife. No prize money, no appearance money. Nothing. Now, I accept that as a Paralympian you aren’t going to get the same sort of cash as the able-bodied athletes and
overall
I try not to let these things bother me too much. But I do think meeting promoters should find a way of incentivising athletes like me to break world records.

With things going so well, I approached that year’s World Championships with real anticipation. But I also had a big dilemma. UKA had agreed to let me explore the longer distances on the condition I didn’t turn my back on sprinting. Faced with such a punishing schedule in Assen, I knew something had to give. I couldn’t do six events and realistically stand a chance of winning. At one stage I was contemplating doing the 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 1,500m and 5,000m.

Maybe I should explain here why wheelchair athletes like me are even able to consider racing over such a wide range of distances. Unlike able-bodied runners, who can run faster over shorter distances, wheelchair racers build more slowly towards their top speeds and can then maintain a decent pace for much longer distances. It’s still a question of stamina, but providing you have a good technique and conserve energy for the sprint finishes at the end it’s a bit
like being the Duracell bunny. We just go on and on. It’s one of the strange quirks of wheelchair athletics that the
average
speed in a marathon – a race of 26.2 miles – is higher than in a long-distance track race. That’s mainly because on the track you have to negotiate bends and all the bunching that goes with racing on a tight circuit. But in a road race like a marathon you don’t have tight turns and you have the luxury of much more space.

But even allowing for all that, contemplating all these events was stupid – the timetable of heats and finals would have been impossible to manage. In the end, I dropped the 5,000m – I wasn’t ready.

However, while it might have been too soon to move on to the longest track distance, I also had good reason not to turn my back on the shortest: revenge.

It was May 2006 and I was in Switzerland for a 100m race. It was a good field, which summed up what a strong period this was for wheelchair sprinting. There was Kenny van Weeghel, the Flying Dutchman, who won gold over 200m in the World Championships in 2003 and then gold in the 400m in Athens in 2004. The Finn Leo-Pekka Tähti was also in the line-up. Leo is really quiet off the track but on it he’s a monster. He was undoubtedly the man to beat, having won gold in the 100m and 200m at the Athens Paralympics. Wheelchair racing needed big names and big characters, and these were two of the biggest names around – I was honoured to be competing with guys like this.

But just because I respected them, that didn’t mean that
I had to turn a blind eye if I felt they were doing something wrong. As we all waited for the gun to go in that 100m that night, Kenny got off to an absolute flyer. He roared away to win the race and smash Leo’s world record. Afterwards I was so angry. I was absolutely convinced Kenny had jumped the gun. And that gave Kenny an unfair
advantage
. So I asked the officials, ‘How on earth can you let that stand?’

Kenny tried to tough it out. ‘Look, whatever happened has now happened. What can I do about it?’

But I didn’t let it go. And after the officials looked again at the replay of the race they saw he had false-started and disqualified him. Leo’s record stood and justice had been done. But I was still angry about the way Kenny had reacted. If he had put his hands up then that might have been different. He is normally a nice bloke but that went against the spirit of the sport. I told Jenny afterwards that I would do the 100m at the World Championships one last time. I wanted to win gold and deny Kenny in his home country.

Fast-forward a few months to Kenny’s backyard, the De Smelt Arena, and the World Championships 100m final. I hadn’t forgotten about what had happened a few months earlier in Switzerland, and I was determined to get my own back. In the end it was a tight race but I did it, beating him by a couple of hundredths of a second. It was a fantastic feeling – not only to be world champion but to beat Kenny. To me, he hadn’t held up his hands. If you lose you lose.
Take it on the chin and work harder and make sure you don’t get beaten again.

I have a reputation on the circuit for being a bit
ruthless
and I know people are scared of me. They know I won’t take any nonsense on the track. If I make a mistake or knock people then I will hold my hands up and apologise, but others try and put you off deliberately. The most common bit of gamesmanship in wheelchair athletics is to try and knock your opponents’ hands. It’s a bit like when runners catch the back of their rivals’ heels. Wheelchair racing is all about maintaining a steady rhythm. You need to keep pumping your arms up and down, pushing down on the rims which drive your two back wheels. If someone knocks your hand it can disturb that rhythm and give them an advantage.

Racing chairs have come a long way in the last twenty years but they are still extremely difficult to steer around a track. Each one has its own steering lever above the main frame which runs down to the front wheel. But because you want to maintain your speed and momentum you don’t want to cruise around the bend holding the lever and not pushing your back wheels. So you can set your chair to two different modes – the straight and the bend. The wheels then lock to the right angle for both sections of the track and all you have to do is to hit the compensator, another lever which sits under the frame, to flick between the two.

This means that going into and out of the bends we are
all leaning forward to whack our compensators and at that point you can – accidentally or otherwise – knock your opponents’ hands as they are trying to push. Of course, whenever you confront someone about it they will tell you it’s not deliberate. But I am not so sure. If someone knocks my gloves when my arms are in full flow, I simply give them a look. They know not to do it again.

What I do know is that I don’t do it deliberately to other people. I have never had anyone say I race unfairly. I have never seen any remarks from anyone saying I was dirty. All right, I might be aggressive: you have to be to win. I don’t take any nonsense from anyone. I am there to race. There are no rules and regulations about racing aggressively. If you can’t take it then don’t do it. If someone wants to sit behind you for the whole race then deal with it. It’s just racing, isn’t it? There’s nothing in the rulebook that says you have to take the front. That’s why I always try and keep out of trouble. What I do is keep my front wheel on the outside of my fiercest rival’s back wheels otherwise I could get stuck. For years and years Jenny has taught me that technique. Then, if you need to get out, you can. You want to avoid getting boxed in at all costs.

People might be surprised to learn that wheelchair athletes are as competitive and ruthless as we are. But this is world-class elite sport. It’s just like running, but with chairs instead. I never back down. Someone will have to. But it’s not going to be me.