Weirwolf Page 16

Day One: Friday 31 August. 5,000m heats

  Usually I am quite relaxed about heats. I might get a few butterflies in big championships but I always expect to qualify. London was also much more straightforward because I only had to go through two rounds, not three. It would have been much harder to consider going for four golds if there had been more qualifying rounds to come through.

  Despite that I was still feeling nervous as hell before that first heat, waiting on the concourse under the stadium for our race to be called. Ours was the third race on and I knew some of my big rivals, Marcel, Kurt and Prawat, were in the first two heats and had done well. The one who really worried me was Julien Casoli. He seemed to be flying. As far as my race was concerned, apart from a Chinese racer called Liu Chengming and a South Korean, Hong Suk-Man, it was pretty straightforward – on paper.

  Once I was on the track I was fine. The crowd was amazing, it was exactly what I had hoped for. I looked around, trying to spot an empty seat. I couldn’t see one anywhere in the stadium. It was just a mass of faces and bodies. The roar almost split my eardrums. It was like a plane taking off. I felt so good, so strong. I was never in any trouble and booked my place in the final on Sunday night with a winning time of 11:28.88. I was on my way.

  Day Two: Saturday 1 September. Rest day

  I felt very good when I got up on the Saturday morning. It was quite a late heat so I hadn’t really eaten properly the night before, just loads of bananas, as I knew I would have to load up on rest days. I didn’t read any of the papers. I wanted to wait for that. I called Emily and my mum and dad on the phone and had a bit of a chat. The heat was the only race that Emily came up for. I didn’t want her coming all the way over to Stratford in her condition. She was really starting to show by now and with Mason as well it was all very tiring. The thing was, I never even got a chance to see her on the night of the race. I had failed to spot her in the crowd when I came out onto the track and then afterwards I was whisked straight back to the village. It was weird to think she had been in the stadium with all those people and then I was having to talk to her on the phone the next day. She helped keep me calm because already my mind was starting to turn to the final on the Sunday night. My first shot at gold.

  Day Three: Sunday 2 September. 5,000m final

  From the moment I opened my eyes at 8 a.m. I was nervous. I had major butterflies. This was it. I only had about twelve hours before my first final at London 2012. I was absolutely buzzing, bouncing off the walls in the afternoon. I just didn’t want it to go wrong.

  I spoke to Jenny. She tried to make me chill out. She told me I was in the best shape she had ever seen. But I was still worrying about Kurt, Marcel, Prawat and the Frenchman Julien Casoli. What sort of shape would they be in? Had I done enough?

  It was a very late race. I had a light lunch then I tried to have an early dinner but it didn’t happen. I was too anxious to eat. As race time approached I tried not to show what I was feeling inside. It didn’t help that everything was running about ten minutes late – it meant I had more time to fret. When we finally got on the track, that was the first time I felt really emotional. I was really struggling to hold it together. By that point it was almost 10.30 p.m. As I did my warm-up laps on the back straight I spotted my mates, Tarick, Ricky and Leon. But I had to look away because I felt they were going to cry. I have never felt that before. I got to the start line and thought, I have to do this for all the people who have come, all those people who have stayed late into the evening to support me.

  The race was a bit of a blur. I just tried to stay in a good position in second or third place. I didn’t take the front once. When the field started to bunch up I made sure I was in lane two so I could get out.

  There were a couple of times when Marcel tried to make a bit of a break and he stretched the field a bit. On lap seven he came around me, trying to send me a message. I just thought, ‘What are you doing? I am just going to sit on your wheel and let you take me home.’

  This was the fastest man over 5,000m in the world. He totally played into my hands. I sat there for the whole race, just waiting to pounce. I hit the front with about 150 metres to go. I knew I had the sprint finish to beat him. What I didn’t know was who was behind me. Who might come and pip me on the line. But there was no one. And as Marcel ran out of steam, I cruised through to win easily in a time of 11:07.65.

  As I crossed the line I shouted so much my throat was sore.

  It was relief. Sheer relief. Instantly the pressure had disappeared. I had done it – a gold in my home Games. Now I could relax in all the other races and do my job properly. The other racers were worried then. I beat them by a chair’s length. That was massive.

  Jenny described the race afterwards as perfect. She told me I had got it right on the biggest night of my life. And she told me that I could now just go and enjoy the rest of the Games.

  Unfortunately, my mum and dad weren’t in the stadium to see me win that night. UK Athletics messed up all the tickets. I was supposed to get three tickets a day for each of my finals and five for my heats. Because of that, none of my family entered the public ballot. Then, closer to the Games, we were told UKA couldn’t get the ticket allocation. They still sorted some tickets out for us but I was angry at not getting the amount we had been promised. It’s normal for families of Olympic athletes to miss out on tickets to see their relatives perform. Demand will always be greater than supply. But it was a new problem for Paralympians. Because it was in London everyone wanted to go, so I had already had to disappoint loads of people. To then have to disappoint the people closest to me, the ones who had supported me along the way, really pissed me off.

  Still, at least I had my mates in the crowd that night and as I did my lap of honour they came down to the front row to congratulate me. The noise as I went round was amazing. It was just the same as Mo Farah’s races. The wave just followed you around. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before. Seb Coe said afterwards that my win in the 5,000m was one of the highlights of the whole of London 2012. I felt so honoured when he said that: coming from a legend of the track like him, it really meant so much.

  Because it was the last race of the night, I was stuck in doping until the early hours of Monday morning. I was so dehydrated that it took me until 2 a.m. to produce a sample. But even though I had to be up again for the 1,500m heats, I didn’t care. I knew adrenalin would get me through. By the time I emerged from a deserted stadium, it was too late to get a bus. I had to get a car to take me back to the village. It was about 3 a.m. by the time I walked into the food hall to grab anything I could. I was starving. I hadn’t eaten for almost twelve hours. It wasn’t exactly textbook diet stuff, a couple of bits of pizza. What a way to celebrate winning gold at your home Games!

  When I got back to my room I couldn’t sleep. I had so many text messages. I tried to reply to as many as possible and I obviously rang Jenny and Emily. I watched my Twitter feed go crazy. I could sense I had been at the centre of something extraordinary but when you are racing you don’t realise the impact. I knew how I felt, though. My adrenalin was flowing, my heart was pumping and I had the biggest smile on my face.

  I put on some film or other, I can’t remember what it was, and I finally crashed out at about 4 a.m.

  Day Four: Monday 3 September. 1,500m heats

  I didn’t get much sleep that night. With my heat off at 10 a.m. I had to be up at 7 a.m. So it wasn’t exactly the best preparation. I had that buzz you get when you haven’t had enough sleep. It felt good but I knew I would have to crash out at some point.

  In that state there was only one thing for it. I went to the flat above me and had a coffee with Chantal Petitclerc, the UKA team mentor. By the time I got to the warm-up I felt like a new man again.

  It was only when I started to see some of the media coverage and talk to people down at the warm-up track that I realised how big my win had been. I also didn’t have a clue that the Duchess of Cambridge had been in the crowd cheering me
on. When I looked back at the TV coverage I saw how Seb Coe, next to her in the VIP section, had pointed me out and suggested she keep an eye on me during the race. Apparently she hadn’t seen a gold medal all day and she has since spoken to me about how I made her night because I delivered the gold medal she had been hunting for. And in the very last race of the night. That really made me very proud.

  I also didn’t realise until the next morning that, big though my performance was, it had been totally overshadowed by Oscar Pistorius’s defeat by the young Brazilian Alan Oliveira in the T43/44 200m. It was the upset of the Games so far: Pistorius, the biggest name of the Games, beaten by this kid in the last 20 metres of the race. That morning people kept coming up to me saying, ‘So I see Oscar’s stolen your limelight again.’

  I honestly didn’t know too much about it. I had been so focused, thinking about my final, that I had missed the row that was brewing a few yards away from me. After Oscar lost he came into the mixed zone, where journalists can grab the athletes for interview, and told the TV cameras that the International Paralympic Committee should check the length of Oliveira’s prosthetic legs. He told reporters, ‘I’m not taking away from Alan’s performance, he’s a great athlete, but these guys are a lot taller and you can’t compete with the stride length. You saw how far he came back. We aren’t racing a fair race.’

  Once again the Paralympics was becoming the stage for the Oscar Pistorius story. During the Olympics, whenever British athletes won they got on the front and back pages. I thought I was going to get the same treatment that morning. But Oscar blew all that.

  I don’t know Oscar well at all. Our paths have crossed occasionally and we would always say hello to each other, but not much more beyond that. I’ve always thought he seems a nice bloke and obviously an amazingly gifted athlete.

  What’s gone on since the Games is as astonishing to me as it is the rest of the world. But I just don’t know him well enough to judge. When the story broke that he had shot his girlfriend the media kept calling me up and asking me to comment. But what could I say? I didn’t have a clue what had gone on and didn’t know him.

  But when it comes to his quest – successfully fulfilled to such acclaim in London – to become the first male Paralympian to run in the Olympics, well, I do have an opinion. On one level I can understand where he’s coming from – he wants to compete and be the best he can be. He thinks he can run against able-bodied athletes. If I was in his situation I would probably want to do the same thing.

  And yet when he runs in the Paralympics, gets beaten and then moans about it, well, then I see a different side. At first I was fully backing him. Why not? He didn’t have a massive advantage – all right, he can’t get calf strains and maybe doesn’t get lactic acid build-up, but he’s never going to win a gold medal in the Olympics. He’s not even going to make an individual final because he’s not quick enough. Forty-five seconds was his best but you have to be in the high 44s to make a final. But if that was what he wanted to do I backed him.

  Then when you see him lose to Alan Oliveira in the Paralympics and start moaning, you stop and think, hang on. Oscar had been moaning for years about a lack of competition in the Paralympics. It was one of the reasons he was so determined to run in the Olympic Games. Now someone like Oliveira or our own Jonnie Peacock comes along and you have got the competition you wanted and you suddenly complain about that. What does he want? To wipe the floor with everyone in the Paralympics and then do OK in the Olympics? You just can’t have the best of both worlds. You start wondering whether it is all just a publicity stunt.

  As the row rumbled on I was pretty confident – for once – that the IPC had called this one right. All the runners with blades get measured beforehand and I am confident they strictly enforced the rules. I know from being in the call room before races in London that it was extremely strict. Alan Oliveira wouldn’t have been allowed on the track if there were any question marks about the length of his blades, if they thought he was cheating or his legs were too long. My British teammate Richard Whitehead experienced the same thing during the World Championships in Christchurch. There was a big hoo-ha then because he came out of the woodwork and beat everyone. Loads of people started pointing the finger at him, saying, how has he done that? Are his blades too long?

  This debate will only get really difficult if a blade runner emerges who can run fast enough to win gold in the Olympics. But I don’t think for one minute that the International Olympic Committee or all the other able-bodied athletes would allow it. Do you think if Oscar was a real threat to the able-bodied guys that they would let him in? At the moment it’s all very matey, but let’s see how friendly everyone is if a Paralympian starts running sub-45 seconds.

  It’s very difficult to know where to draw the line. Obviously Oscar is a fantastic athlete and to run in the Olympics is an amazing achievement, but look at wheelchair racers like me. We would never get the chance Oscar got. The best I could have hoped for would have been an exhibition race during the Olympic Games. I really pushed on that but the IPC didn’t want to do it. It was always a tradition going back years and I thought the 1,500m, as one of the blue riband events of the Paralympics, should be the one to get in. But it never got off the ground. The IPC – rightly, I guess – wanted our Games to be the main event. By staging an exhibition in the Olympics it was effectively admitting that we were second best, not parallel.

  But what if you looked at things the other way around? What if an able-bodied athlete jumped into a wheelchair and started competing against us? Technically, our class, T54, is open so is there anything to stop that? It’s a real grey area.

  Actually, I wouldn’t be too worried if someone able bodied did take us on because it is ultimately about technique and power in my class. It might sound strange but walking is a disadvantage because you build up leg muscle weight and that bulk means you are much heavier. And if you are heavier you are slower in your chair. Besides, the real power all comes from the arms and the shoulders. It’s an interesting debate but I suspect it will remain that – a talking point.

  As for Oscar and his latest drama, I had to just put all that to one side and qualify for the final of the 1,500m. I had a really tough heat with Prawat and Marcel up against me. There was also the lightning-fast Chinese athlete who had beaten me in the 400m in Beijing, Zhang Lixin. Only the first three were guaranteed a place in Wednesday’s final, plus perhaps a fastest qualifier. The pressure was on.

  I sat behind Marcel for much of the race but then Prawat was on my back wheel waiting to take me on. The only way I could qualify was if I pushed Marcel all the way. I knew Lixin was closing on me too, so it was really tight. In the end I scraped through in third in a time of 3:11.35. Afterwards there was a real heart-in-mouth moment when we had to wait for the scoreboard to flash up the official results. I knew I had come third but I started to think there was a problem. Maybe one of the judges had spotted something. The whole crowd were silent waiting for my name to pop up in third with that big ‘Q’ indicating I had qualified next to it. I had to move on to the mixed zone and I was actually on TV being interviewed when the big roar went up confirming I was in. I tried to pretend that it was all part of some grand plan, but it wasn’t. Physically I was actually fine but mentally I was a bit tired.

  With my place in the 1,500m final secure, I could finally look forward to getting my hands on my first gold medal. The presentation ceremony for the 5,000m was scheduled for the end of that morning session. And I was so touched that 80,000 people waited behind to see it and to sing ‘God Save the Queen’ with me. In between my heat and the presentation I managed to nip off and have a quick shower and change into my tracksuit. I was hoping it might make me feel a bit fresher. But as I was waiting to be taken into the stadium with Julien Casoli, I was feeling really nervous, hot and exhausted.

  Once I got onto the podium and had that medal around my neck the roar was unbelievable. I had never really held a London medal before now. I had seen th
em but I was a bit suspicious about getting too close as I didn’t want to jinx myself. So to hold one of those bad boys was brilliant. It felt weighty. Some of the medals you get at championships feel like they’ve been bought from Poundland. This didn’t: it was massive and felt like a just reward for all the months, all the years, of hard work.

  I know this will sound daft, but I made sure I learned all the words to the national anthem off by heart before the Games. I know it’s very short and there aren’t a lot of words to learn but I just didn’t want to slip up. And I wanted to show people how patriotic I was and how much it mattered to me. The whole stadium seemed to be singing with me as the Union flag rose. Of course you dream of this moment but now I was there it didn’t feel strange or surreal. It just felt right. Like I belonged there.

  For months now I had been telling people that I would be happy to get just one gold in London. But that wasn’t how I felt now. I wanted more.

  Day Five: Tuesday 4 September. 1,500m final

  That morning I surprised myself. Normally, the day of a final would be really nervy and anxious. I expected to feel the same way as I had on the Sunday. But I just woke up feeling a great sense of calm. It was as if a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I must have been giving out really confident vibes, because when I got down to the warm-up track that evening I could see a couple of the other guys looked a bit scared of me. As we did a few laps some of them tried to match me for pace but they couldn’t. I left them for dead. I looked at their faces and I could see how worried they were.

  Down at the warm-up track word reached me via the former Canadian racer Jeff Adams, who was in London commentating, that Kurt Fearnley had been highlighting some flaws in my performance in the 5,000m. I was a bit puzzled to hear this. If I had some flaws then how did I win so convincingly? It was probably just Kurt playing mind games and I didn’t really mind. People try to beat you in all sorts of different ways.