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  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.

  CHAPTER 6

  BREAKING BOUNDARIES

  Any 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 ant
icipation. 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.

  Of course, all this can lead to some pretty nasty crashes. Perhaps the most infamous came in the women’s 5,000m in my classification – the T54 – during the Beijing 2008 Games. You can see the video on YouTube. It was really messy. With two laps to go everyone was really tightly bunched when, all of a sudden, the two Swiss athletes leading the pack clashed wheels. They hit the deck, causing nearly everyone just behind them to crash too. It was almost a total wipe-out. Officials then ran onto the track, impeding those athletes who did manage to avoid the crash. One of the athletes broke her collarbone and, although they awarded the medals, the race had to be rerun following an appeal.

  It just shows how wheelchair racing is not for the faint-hearted. But I am not frightened of the dangers and what might happen on the track. I don’t even think about it. It’s all part of the sport.

  After winning the 100m I went from strength to strength. The only event I didn’t win was the 200m, where I got a silver. I left Assen that September with four gold medals and that one silver. It was my big breakthrough. That season I was unbeatable.

  Looking back on that period of my career, I find it quite difficult to believe what I achieved. Because, away from the track, my life was a mess. I have no idea how I broke those records and won those gold medals. Mentally, I just wasn’t there. I couldn’t even train properly. Sometimes I would spend the first hour in Richmond Park just crying.

  By the early part of 2006 my relationship with Kaylie had broken down. It had become impossible for us to live with each other. Maybe it was because her nan died around that time. Or maybe it was because we got togethe
r when she was too young. But whatever the reason, it became a living hell for me.

  I was always grateful for what she had done for me seven years before. Without her I might not even be here to write this story. But we changed so much that there was no option but to end it and to go our separate ways.

  I had experienced failing relationships in the past and I knew how painful they could be. But this was different. This time there was a child caught up in it all. For Ronie, who was almost three when it all came to a head, it was a terrible time. Kaylie and I were rowing all the time and I felt she was going out too much. I never knew where she was. That year I was on the road more than ever before. I was racing as much as I could and would spend long periods away. I was trying to succeed in the career she had encouraged me to go into and to make some money for the family. I just thought if I could break through and do well in the future maybe I would be able to look after everyone. And yet every time I left the country I was worrying about what might be going on back home.

  Perhaps she felt she needed to get something out of her system. Maybe she got tied down with me too young and wasn’t really ready to handle all my problems. All I do know is that that year was such a struggle for me at home. I just didn’t trust her.

  At the time I was devastated. I felt it was me. I felt because I was devoting so much time to my career, it must be my fault. I was insecure because I was in a wheelchair. But in fairness to Kaylie my disability had never been an issue. She said it just didn’t bother her that I was in a wheelchair. It’s been like that with a lot of the girls I have had relationships with over the years. They just don’t see me in that way. They look past the chair. It never created any tension that we couldn’t always do the same things as other couples. There was never any sense of resentment. I think we just fell in love too young and that she wanted a different life. I remember ringing her all the time when I was in Holland for the World Championships and most of the time she wasn’t even in. That just drove me mad. It felt like my life was just falling apart.