Free Novel Read

Weirwolf Page 19


  But I can also see the other point of view. When I was younger I needed benefits. It was harder to get a job back then. People never looked beyond the wheelchair. Now, with the Equality Act, there’s a big difference. The disabled person stands a chance in the workplace. If people can’t work then they need to explain it.

  On a more personal level I have to admit I have felt a bit let down by the way things have gone since the Paralympic flame went out. I don’t want anyone to think I am hard done by. Let’s be clear – London 2012 was first and foremost about winning. It wasn’t about getting rich. And in the year since the Games I have done well from sponsorship deals with companies like BMW and GlaxoSmithKline.

  BMW have been a great supporter. Not only have they provided me with a car, they have adapted it so I can drive it. It’s actually much simpler than you think. It’s an automatic car with a special lever installed which connects to the accelerator and the brake. If I want to accelerate I push in one direction. If I want to brake, then I pull it towards me. Simple as that. It’s a great piece of technology which has transformed my life – especially with wheelchair racing. You have to get your day chair and your racing chair around and there is so much other kit to carry. I currently have an X5 but I will soon be getting an X6. We need a bit of extra room with all the children now too.

  I can also count on the support of the billionaire Topshop owner, Sir Philip Green. He has been helping me since 2009 through personal donations. It must be one of the luckiest things that has ever happened to me. It all started about five or six years ago. I was training in Richmond Park when a bloke walking his dog came up to me. He was called Randall and he explained that he used to work on the Stock Exchange but had since retired. He said he had a wealthy friend who might be interested in helping me. I gave him my number and never expected to hear another word. But sure enough Randall called back a couple of weeks later and told me about his connection to Sir Philip. He told me he was going to have a word with him.

  Again, I didn’t expect anything to come of it but a few weeks later Randall said Sir Philip and his wife had agreed to help me. They didn’t want any publicity from it. They just wanted to help. And so, a few years later, Sir Philip started giving me an annual donation to help with my training. And to think I hadn’t even met him at that point. After the Games I was inundated with requests from journalists. Because the Games had been so busy I hadn’t had much of a chance to really open up and tell my side of the story. It had all been quick clips and press conferences. I wanted to do something once it had all died down but didn’t know where to do it. So Sir Philip kindly agreed to step in and lend me one of his offices to hold a big media day.

  The money from Sir Philip and my other deals has made me more comfortable than ever before. I no longer need to rely on National Lottery funding, and for a Paralympian that is quite a breakthrough. It’s changed my life.

  But people shouldn’t imagine that I am now some high-rolling millionaire. People see me on the TV at this or that event and think I am now minted. But I still rent the same two-bedroom house from Sutton Council that I have lived in for more than a decade. In fact, as I write this, I am involved in a row with them about trying to swap my place for a bigger house with an extra bedroom. Once, a reporter from the Daily Mail phoned up to arrange an interview with Emily and when she told them roughly where we lived the journalist immediately assumed we lived in one of the big houses up in Purley. They were shocked when she told them to meet her at the Phoenix Leisure Centre on the Roundshaw Estate. My ambition is to eventually buy whichever council house we end up with so I can at least have a bit of an investment for my family. Something to build on.

  In common with quite a few Olympians and Paralympians, my success in London didn’t lead to a new kit sponsor. No Nike or Adidas came knocking on my door – despite winning four gold medals. You have to wonder what you have to do. My agent, Jamie Baulch, has been working his heart out to try and get me a kit deal and there are people out there saying they will give me free kit. But I am worth more than that. Maybe it’s the wheelchair – because other Paralympians like Jonnie Peacock have managed to get deals. Maybe, at thirty-four, I’m simply too old.

  The other thing that hasn’t changed is the appearance and prize money from racing. When it comes to that, we are still a long way from being equal with the able-bodied athletes. I got double what I was paid for the marathon in 2012. But Mo Farah got at least ten times the amount I received for running half the race. I am not criticising the London Marathon guys. They have always been so supportive. I am simply pointing out the massive gap which exists.

  The Anniversary Games in London is another good example. I was offered $7,000 to compete. Again, it’s nice money and I wouldn’t miss the chance to go back to that stadium for the world. But that fee was the same regardless of who you were or how many Paralympic gold medals you had won. I bet Jessica Ennis wasn’t getting that amount.

  I guess you have to accept it will never change. I thought what we did in the Games might have made a difference when it came to money. But it hasn’t. I know some people might think I sound bitter. I’m not. I am doing very nicely and I can now look after my family in a way I couldn’t have possibly imagined when I started competing all those years ago. I am simply saying that we shouldn’t just swallow it when people say it changed everything. Yes, it shifted people’s perceptions about the disabled. But we are a long way from being sporting equals.

  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 i
n 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.