Weirwolf Page 4

  In those days I was a shy boy and I just used to sit back and take it all in. John Gayle was the player who probably looked out for me the most and who I got to know the best. He was a lovely man and was always giving me lifts or taking me out for dinner. He did so much for me.

  All the members of the Crazy Gang were fantastic characters. What always struck me was that they seemed to enjoy playing so much. They loved every minute they were playing and while it was important to do your best, work your socks off and win, it was also important to have a laugh. That attitude really made a big impression on me and I have tried to follow the same principle in my sporting career. In those days Wimbledon never seemed to be under pressure. I am sure they were, but it never came across that way. They were a fantastic club and it is a real shame that there won’t be another team like them – not in my lifetime anyway. The Premier League has changed beyond recognition from those early years when Wimbledon were a part of it. The gulf between a club like that and big teams like Arsenal and Manchester United was always huge – even back in the 1980s and early ’90s. But in these days of super-rich foreign owners and multi-billion-pound TV deals it’s hard to see how a little club that worked its way up from non-league football with attendances of just over 15,000 could ever hope to compete. It’s a shame but football is now such a big business.

  With Jenny busy at Wimbledon, I got my head down and started training at Tooting.

  I loved those early days. It was such a buzz to do something I really enjoyed. The sense of freedom was immense and it really helped to take the edge off those dark days when I would get upset about things. Whenever I felt like asking ‘Why me?’, I could now go out on the track and vent my anger. Maybe this is what gave me that desire, that hunger to try to do well and succeed in something.

  My first coaches were a father-and-son duo called Chas and Dan Sadler. Chas was a very good wheelchair racer who often used to do the London Marathon and combined coaching down at the Tooting Bec track with a bit of racing. His son Dan, although able bodied, chose to race in a wheelchair. In those days there was nothing in the rules to prevent people without disabilities from racing in wheelchairs. It might seem a bit strange but because he grew up with his dad in a chair it was all very normal to him. Once in the chair he had no advantage over those in the same classification with disabilities and he raced the circuit for years.

  But clearly not everyone understood why he was doing it. And a few years ago he hit the headlines when it emerged he had accepted prize money for competing in the Great North Run. Someone later spotted him getting out of his chair and told the papers and he had to hand the money back. It didn’t bother me that he was able bodied but chose to race in a chair. The class was open to able-bodied people at the time anyway. I felt sorry for him when he got all this negative publicity because he was only doing a sport his dad was involved with and he was only doing it for fun. Maybe he shouldn’t have taken the prize money but it probably wasn’t very much.

  Between them Chas and Dan came up with a training programme which instilled a bit of discipline into what I was doing. But even at that early age it was clear I had a bit of a gift. Sometimes I feel like I was put on this earth to race. I had naturally fast hand speed, I was light, and I had a good technique. I learned my own style and developed it very quickly. When I teach youngsters now, I obviously teach them the basics but I emphasise that they have to find and develop their own style that will work for them. You wouldn’t expect Paula Radcliffe to run like Michael Johnson. There is a certain basic level of technique required for sprinting and long-distance running but they both have their own natural, distinctive style. It’s just the same in wheelchair racing and it’s something I don’t believe you can teach.

  Although some coaches I have worked with have tried to change my style, it’s pretty much the same now as it was when I started. I generate the power from my shoulders. That’s then passed down through the triceps, through the forearms, through the wrists into the push rims, which move my wheels. I also use a lot of my core strength, and the muscles in my chest. But it’s not all about power. If it was then lighter athletes like my Swiss rival Marcel Hug would not be anywhere near the top. I could lift double the weights he can in the gym. But he’s still got great speed in the chair.

  It’s all down to how your hands connect with the push rims. You need to be as efficient and fluent as possible. You want to be flowing and hit that push rim at the right time. You want a smooth rhythm and I try my best not to waste energy when I race. The jerkier you are the less efficient you are. You need to glide along the track. It’s exactly like watching Mo Farah run, he seems to glide along on his toes. It doesn’t look like he’s expending any effort.

  The pushing technique is not easy to master because you have to hit the wheel rims with such speed. It takes a lot of practice to master. As my arms move downward I half-clench my fists but leave my thumbs sticking out. My knuckles make contact with the push rim first, a fraction of a second before the thumb hits it, driving it down to the bottom of the push. I then flick off before lifting my arms and doing it all again. Some people might be more thumb, others are more knuckle. I am actually different on each hand – that’s why if you study me closely you will see I use more thumb on my left hand than my right. It might be because my back is slightly crooked and so leads to me favouring one arm over the other. It’s the tiniest of margins but when you are racing it can make a big difference.

  Even from an early age I wanted to win everything, regardless of the distance. Whether it was 100m or 5,000m, I wanted to beat everyone. I don’t think there was anyone else in my age group who could do the range of distances that I have always done. A lot of the strength came from walking around on callipers and I have always had big biceps and triceps and enormous hands. So I am thankful my mum and dad wanted me to walk around as a kid, instead of using a wheelchair. It made me much stronger. I didn’t lift any weights until I was eighteen. I didn’t know you had to. All my strength came through pushing my chair.

  Maybe it was the strength but I always felt the training came easy – it was just a bit of fun. There were probably a few times when, as a teenager, I didn’t want to go because I wanted to be out with my mates. But I didn’t take it too seriously. I was just lucky I won so many races. By the time I was thirteen I was already racing with the Great Britain seniors. To race grown men and beat them was an amazing feeling. With Chas and Dan’s guidance I got stronger and stronger and really started to develop as an athlete. And it was thanks to them that I got to my first Paralympics in Atlanta. They were a huge part of my early years.

  Back in those days the chairs I raced in were nothing like the ones I have specially made for me now. My first one was paid for with a grant from Sutton Council. I immediately felt faster and loved it. I felt like a wheelchair racer. Although I have to admit it would look weird now up against the modern, streamlined machines we use today. It had four chunky wheels – three-wheelers were still quite a new thing back then. It looked a bit like a hospital trolley bed and it took a bit of getting used to.

  We had a little path along the side of the house, so when I first got it I used to go up and down this path for hours on end. I really came to love it and I used it for quite a long time. It was made by a company called Bromakin, which was founded by the 1988 gold-medal-winning Paralympian Peter Carruthers. His is one of those amazing, inspiring stories that are so commonplace in disability sport.

  He was working as a plumber when he was badly injured in a car crash and left needing to use a wheelchair. His desire to race and compete led him to adapt his own chair and to develop a whole range of modern racing machines. I wish I still had that first chair but I think I left it at the track for someone else to use. When you are younger you don’t value old things, you always want the latest bit of kit on the market. For me it was a bit like moving on to a new car. I never looked back.

  With Chas and Dan overseeing my training I gradually increased the number of
races I took part in. They were all over the country and my parents used to give up so much of their time and money to make sure I could compete. At first it was my mum who used to ferry me around all over the place because my dad hadn’t passed his driving test. Then he got his licence and for the next six or seven years he gave up much of his life to help me compete and train. He used to leave home for work at 6 a.m., come back twelve hours later and then take me out to training. He would never eat, he would just take me straight to Tooting Bec. It was an amazing sacrifice, day after day. Then he was forking out for all the races around the country. I was extremely fortunate that my mum and dad had two full-time jobs so we were OK, but they were hardly rolling in it and paying for their son’s racing ambitions must have caused quite a hefty dent in the family bank account. Apart from the grant for the chair there were no sponsors or charities to pay for the petrol or the entry fees.

  But my parents just wanted me to do well and saw that it was giving their son a focus and a sense of normality. So for my old man, if that meant loading up the red Ford Escort and heading off on the motorway for hours on end then so be it. There were so many race meetings back when I was a junior. And it was surprisingly competitive, with athletes in a whole range of classes. Nowadays when you go to them you are lucky to get a couple of athletes in each class. But Stoke Mandeville was always my favourite. I started going there from the age of nine or ten. It was here that the Paralympic movement started and where the first Games, inspired by Professor Sir Ludwig Guttmann, were held back in 1948. Everywhere you look there’s a reminder of the place’s heritage. You can’t help but be moved and inspired. It just has an aura about it, a sense of history, and anyone who goes there immediately understands its significance. During training camps it was a who’s who of Paralympic sport. But the person who always made me feel most at ease was also the most successful wheelchair athlete of her generation. Tanni Grey-Thompson was one of my earliest heroines and to meet her as a young athlete starting out was such a privilege. Because she is so down to earth and approachable it’s easy to forget she has achieved so much as an athlete, but from the very first day we met at Stoke Mandeville she always backed me. She would watch how I trained and give me little tips and she was always checking I was OK. To have people like Tanni telling you that you had great talent gave the newcomers like me great confidence. It really helped keep me motivated. In those days there wasn’t a nice hotel where athletes could stay – we were all accommodated in giant dormitories where twenty or thirty people could sleep. Despite that I always liked going – even though the track in those early days was bumpy. You didn’t get looked at as odd or different. It was the British home of Paralympic sport. Rubbing shoulders with the best in the country from other sports such as basketball, swimming, archery, table tennis and shooting made you feel part of a very exclusive club. To me it felt like home. And it reaffirmed that this was where I wanted to be. At that stage the only event that mattered to me was the London Marathon. I became slightly obsessed by it. By the time I was thirteen I had mastered the mini version, winning it comfortably. Now I wanted to test myself with the full distance. That was always my dream, my FA Cup Final at Wembley. At least, it was until the summer of 1992. That’s when I got the Paralympic bug.

  Barcelona – blue skies and sunshine, divers leaping off the high board framed by Gaudí’s Sagrada Família, Sally Gunnell winning gold for Great Britain and that archer lighting the sacred flame. That summer’s Olympics was one of the most memorable for years. But it wasn’t those Games which captured my imagination. It was what followed a couple of weeks later that turned my world upside down.

  And the athlete who got me hooked? A Swiss wheelchair racer called Heinz Frei. He ruled the Paralympics that year and won the marathon in front of a crowd of 65,000 people in the Olympic Stadium. He was a phenomenal athlete who dominated races. I remember watching all this on the BBC as a thirteen-year-old and thinking, ‘I want to be him.’ I kept a lot of this to myself, though. In those days I was very awkward and shy. When I wasn’t with my friends or really close family I could feel extremely self-conscious and didn’t really like talking to people. It was the same sort of feelings all teenagers have, but when you are in a wheelchair you feel even more uncomfortable expressing your ideas and ambitions. But my eyes were popping out of my head whenever I watched Heinz race in Barcelona. His performances had a very deep impact on me. He’s well into his fifties now but during his career he won fourteen Paralympic gold medals in summer and winter Games. That is the amazing thing about him: he won gold in cross-country skiing as well as wheelchair athletics. And he’s still racing now. In fact, I have to admit that he came quite close to beating me in the 2013 London Marathon.

  It was hardly a surprise that with all this going on my studies at school had taken a back seat. Suddenly, the only thing that mattered was getting to the Atlanta Games in four years’ time. By the time I took my GCSEs in 1994 I had already decided to focus on my sport. That partly explains my poor results: all E and F grades. Complete rubbish. I blamed the school a little bit: the English coursework was given to us too late and there were other lessons I wanted to do which weren’t available to me. In the end, PE was my best grade (hardly a shock). But it wasn’t all down to the school. I should have studied more.

  But at that time I simply couldn’t wait to get away. So I tried studying at a couple of colleges – first, tourism at a place called Nescot, just outside Epsom in Surrey. I found it dull and, irritatingly, a load of the same kids I had grown up with at Bedelsford followed me there. My heart sank when I turned up and saw a lot of the old faces. I wanted to escape the confines of a school which reminded me of my physical limitations. I know now, looking back, that it might seem a bit childish but at that stage I didn’t want to be held back any more. In the end, all I really learned was how to play pool in the college bar. Tourism wasn’t for me. I was summoned to see the head of the college.

  ‘What are you playing at?’ he asked me. ‘Why don’t you get your head down and work for a qualification? Don’t you want to make something of yourself?’

  But my heart wasn’t in it. So I told him I didn’t want to do this any more. There and then, I quit. As I wheeled myself out of his office I remember feeling liberated but scared. I had a knot in my stomach and my mouth was dry. I knew I had made the right decision but I had no idea what I was going to do next.

  Music has always been a big part of my life. I love house music and fancy myself as a bit of a DJ. So when the chance came up to study music at another local college in Carshalton, I thought it might be the answer. Unlike tourism, this felt more up my street. But that didn’t work either. I wasn’t made to be in classrooms and, although I knew I was bright enough to learn, my confidence and self-esteem were rock bottom. I would panic whenever it was my turn to speak in a class, the nerves made me sick. I was embarrassed at my inability to read and spell properly. So once again I quit education, this time for good. I felt completely betrayed, angry and lost. Sport would have to be my escape.

  CHAPTER 4

  FOOL’S GOLD

  The Barcelona Paralympics was a turning point in my life. Those golden images of my new heroes Heinz Frei and Tanni Grey-Thompson winning in front of huge, excited crowds convinced me that this was my future. Representing my country at a Paralympics now became my mission, the 1996 Games in Atlanta my dream.

  For the three years after that I worked so hard to become a better athlete, developing my technique, building my strength and fitness and learning the tactical skills that you need to win races. In those days I was a pure sprinter. I was still too young to have worked out what I wanted to specialise in, although even back then I preferred the middle-distance events – the 800m and 1,500m.

  The truth is, sprinting is really boring. The training is repetitive and I just don’t enjoy it. Tactically, the middle-distance races are far more challenging, while in the 100m, if you don’t get the start right then the race is over. And if you suffer from
nerves, like me, then getting off to a good start is extremely difficult. I was always so worried about false starting that I couldn’t relax. In training, I could break the world record, no problem. But when it came to race day, I would freeze. Consistency was my big problem. Some days I could nail the start and move through all the various phases of the race without a single mistake. Other times it would go pear shaped from the off. If I can get myself in contention with 30 or 40 metres to go then I know I have the top-end speed to win. But often I left myself way too much to do.

  Despite all those concerns the sprint events offered me my best chance of getting to Atlanta. Competition for the middle-distance events was fierce – they attracted the best athletes – and I knew I was a promising sprinter. So for now I focused on the 100m, 200m and 400m. As far as I was concerned I just wanted to represent my country, go to the Games and do my best. If the shorter distances got me my golden ticket to the Games, then so what?

  As Atlanta drew ever nearer I knew I was in contention. But it was a major battle to get the qualifying times I needed to get picked by the GB selectors. So, in the early part of 1996 I was a young man on a mission. I spent weeks chasing around the country trying to get the standard. In the end I only made the qualifying time by the skin of my teeth – about a day short of the cut-off point in May. I knew I was improving all the time and that the selectors might be looking to blood some new talent. The team wasn’t that strong and there were only a couple of real gold-medal contenders – Tanni Grey-Thompson and Dave Holding, a four-time winner of the London Marathon who didn’t win a medal in Barcelona but was favourite to win gold over 100m in Atlanta. Apart from those two, the team was in transition. I knew I had a good chance.