Paralympic Heroes

by Cathy Wood

  The four gold medals Tanni won in Barcelona were just the beginning as she went on to win 11 in total (a number since matched by swimmer Dave Roberts, who intends to beat that tally at London 2012). Her achievements have earned her the affection and respect of the sporting community and British public alike but her post-athletics influence does not end there as she is now Baroness Grey-Thompson, an independent Crossbench Peer, who sits in the House of Lords.

  Many people would assume that growing up in a wheelchair sets a young person apart from their contemporaries through disadvantage. Tanni has shown how she has been set apart for other, more positive and enlightening reasons.

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  At Athens 2004, as Tanni Grey-Thompson was winning her 11th and final gold medal of her career, another member of the British team – Lee Pearson – was making headlines of his own.

  Pearson is a man who loves to talk. Whether it’s about the time he offered to give HM the Queen a horse-riding lesson when they were introduced, or the day, as a young boy, when Margaret Thatcher carried him into Number 10 Downing Street, or what it means to be in total harmony with the horses he has ridden to World and Paralympic glory, Lee is rarely lost for words. He is an effervescent, engaging character, with a gift for putting others at ease.

  So the gesture he made at Athens 2004 to a fellow competitor should not have come as too much of a surprise to those who know him. Lee won the Mixed Dressage Championship gold, but after being presented with his medal, he dismounted and made his way, on the crutches he relies on to get around, to the French teenage rider, Valérie Salles, whose horse, Arestote, had collapsed and died of a heart attack as they entered the arena to compete. He gave Valérie his winner’s flowers. It was one of the most poignant and generous moments of the Athens Games, felt by everybody who saw it.

  Although the sport’s governing body, the FEI, awarded Lee a Fair Play Certificate and he was also shortlisted for the prestigious Laureus Sports Awards, his actions had been entirely spontaneous. It was simply a genuine gesture from one rider to another who was grieving a sudden, devastating loss.

  It was all a long way from where life started out for Lee. Born in 1974, he had his left leg wrapped around his right knee, his right leg wrapped around his left knee and the umbilical cord around his neck. He also had a birthmark across half his face and part of his head. The hospital staff decided the best place to put such an usual-looking baby was in the broom cupboard.

  Whether it was because they didn’t want to upset other parents or because they themselves were not sure how to react, history does not relate, but Lee Pearson began life in a cot, covered with a blanket, and placed between a hospital collection of mops, brooms and buckets.

  To begin with his mother Lynda was kept sedated, probably for fear of how she would react, but the day after the birth she threatened to scream the place down unless someone took her to see her son. Lynda, a psychiatric nurse, knew whatever she saw before her that day, she needed to respond positively or risk the baby being taken away. So, surrounded by an entourage of doctors, nurses and psychologists, she was wheeled to where the mops and buckets lived and introduced to her son. While inwardly her heart skipped several beats, she did exactly what any other mother of a newborn would: she picked up her son and gave him the first of many hugs.

  Lee was born with arthrogryposis multiplex congenital, a rare, unusual condition, which affects more than 260 babies every year in the UK. Arthyrogryposis means ‘curved joint’ and results in the joints becoming fixed, or stuck, in a curved position in the womb, which prevents proper growth and range of movement. The earlier this starts in the growing foetus, the more severe the impairment will become. ‘While normal muscles grow like an elastic band, my muscles grew like string,’ says Pearson.

  There are around 200 different conditions that fall under the umbrella term, although ‘Arthyrogryposis’, which affects all four limbs and which Lee has, is the most common. Lynda and Lee’s father Dave, a lorry driver, could do nothing about the cause of their son’s birth defects but they had plenty of say about, and influence over, what happened next. ‘Mum and Dad decided they would give me everything I needed to put me on par with my two older brothers, Damien and Darren – no more, no less,’ says Lee. ‘My mum will tell you now she has three sons and she loves them all the same. She was no less proud of me when I could not do things and she is no more proud of me now.’

  Like her other sons, Lynda Pearson wanted Lee to lead as full a life as his brothers. Before he could even be considered for sporting activity the doctors wanted to try and flatten out his limbs, which meant 15 operations before the age of five and being placed on a crucifix, his hips and legs encased in plaster, to assist the process. This was agony for him. ‘I used to scream and cry, and ask Mum why she was letting the doctors do this to me,’ he recalls.

  He was nominated for one of the Woman’s Own Children of Courage awards and in 1980, aged six, invited to the annual ceremony. There he was introduced to John Thaw and his actress wife, Sheila Hancock, and to comedians Morecambe and Wise, before winning over the Prime Minister at the time, Margaret Thatcher. Britain’s first female PM insisted she carried him up the steps of Number 10 Downing Street, even though he was quite heavy. Any offers of help from Dave Pearson were rejected.

  Despite being in and out of hospital for years, Lynda and Dave resisted the temptation to pamper Lee. His parents wanted as normal a life as possible for him, and they wanted it to be fun. They got a bike with no pedals and pushed him down the hill and then put him on a motorbike, making sure they were on hand to catch him as his feet could not touch the ground. When the older two boys wanted to go waterskiing, Dave got a piece of plywood, modified it to fit Lee’s size and he cut down a pair of wellies to provide greater stability. He was nine when Lynda, herself terrified of horses, introduced him to riding at a local centre where, according to his mother, Lee took a shine to a jet-black pony called Duke. Lee went to a normal secondary school, where he had little difficulty making friends, almost certainly because he knew how to use his humour to make other people feel comfortable if they were unsettled by his disability. He quickly learnt that if people were ignorant about his condition he needed to educate them, whereas if they were arrogant he needed to give as good as he got – which he usually did. And probably because of his own outgoing personality and general acceptance among friends, prejudice was rare.

  Then, one December, Lee, Damien and Darren had a Christmas none would easily forget. While the two older boys discovered they now owned a new tractor and monkey bike, Lee was grappling to understand his collection of presents, which included a set of horse brushes, a bridle and a saddle, all of which were readily available at weekly riding lessons. When he asked his mother why she had made the purchases, she invited him to go outside. ‘It was the most exciting and surreal day of my life,’ says Lee, as he opened the door to find a horse box waiting for him. As the back came down, out came Duke, the pony he’d been having lessons on.

  Lee uses splints, which run the length of both legs, as well as crutches, to get around; he has no strength in his legs or arms. To control a horse he relies on the exceptional balance learned as a child in those early days, which began with Duke. Given that Dressage, both for athletes with a physical disability and the non-disabled, requires the tiniest movements, executed with an expert technique and a unique understanding between horse and rider, did Lee find Duke responding instantly to his commands that Christmas morning? And was it the start of an effortless journey from pet pony to Paralympic podium? Not quite. ‘I was absolutely rubbish, I would fall off every day! I was in so much of a panic. And Duke put me off riding for at least five years. By the time I was 10, I never wanted to see him again,’ says Pearson. By the following Christmas, Duke had been sold. Lee still loved horses but his interest was on the wane.

  Eventually, though, he did get back in the saddle, found a new teacher (Elsie Wilkinson) who drew out the horsemanship in him and, in time, never looked b
ack. Of course, there were setbacks along the way: he fell off, frequently, but was more terrified of Elsie’s reaction than the pain of the fall, so usually got swiftly back in the saddle. And he did a job he hated for six years, in order to support himself as he certainly wasn’t good enough at that point to consider a professional career riding horses. Today, though, Lee Pearson is unquestionably the world’s most successful Paralympic Equestrian rider.

  Dressage is the only Equestrian event on the Paralympic programme and consists of a series of tests. The number of tests a rider completes depends on whether they are doing just an individual event, or the team event as well. If doing all three, as in Lee’s case, first up is the Team Test, then the Championships Test, both of which involve riders completing a series of movements within a set amount of time. Each movement is awarded a score from 0–10 by a panel of judges, producing a percentage score for each Test. The length of the test varies according to a rider’s disability and the category they compete in but will be between three-and-a-half and six minutes in Paralympic competitions.

  The third, and final challenge is the Freestyle Test, where each rider completes a given number of movements, incorporated in any order they wish, to music of their choice. This test tends to be shorter than both Team and Championship Tests. Again, a panel of judges scores each movement to arrive at an overall percentage score.

  Lee’s first Paralympic Games appearance was at Sydney 2000, where he won three gold medals. At Athens 2004, it was three more and at Beijing 2008, his collection grew by another three, which meant he set an Equestrian Paralympic record for being unbeaten at three Paralympic Games. Symbolically, he’s going for three more at London 2012, or, if successful, “12 in 12”.

  Lee only learnt of the Paralympic Games by watching it at home on his television. Perhaps the images helped provide the possibility of an escape route from a life he felt trapped in at the time. But perhaps, with his personality, he might have found his way into something he enjoyed more anyway. Either way, Lee Pearson is an athlete who is hard to forget.

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  Just as Lee Pearson has devoted the last decade to running his yard and preparing for successive Games, Richard Whitehead is a man with a serious passion. His one is an unquenchable desire to run. Not just any old distance, though. He wants to run that most gruelling of all races and one already hard enough for anyone with fully functioning legs – the Marathon. But Richard, a congenital double amputee, has no legs below the patella, or knee.

  Although he’s now found his true event, he has experimented with a number of different sports – including Ice Sledge Hockey – to find the one he feels most comfortable competing in. When he was four, he learnt to swim but he didn’t like it and used to scream. He stuck at it, however, and whether because of the upper body strength he developed, or his natural aptitude, he was good. At around the same time his parents – Geraldine, a housewife, and John, a mechanic – realised sport afforded their son a unique opportunity to integrate with other children and to overcome boundaries which might, later on, have become a problem. ‘They were very forward thinking,’ says Richard. ‘They could see sport would help me make friends and jump over barriers at an early age.’

  Geraldine and John heard about a local gym club, Dako, in Nottingham, which not only put on acrobatic displays but also served the local community by providing young boys with an opportunity to learn a positive skill rather than the alternative of hanging around on street corners. Certain this could help, they enrolled Richard at the age of eight. He’d already tried most sports on offer but taking up gymnastics proved to be an insightful decision. For much of the next four years he would spend hours perfecting skills like balance, coordination, discipline and agility.

  As gymnastics relies largely on upper body conditioning, he found he wasn’t at as much of a disadvantage as he might have been in other sports. ‘Gymnastics is made up of events like the rings, parallel bars and the pommel horse, and you don’t need legs to do that,’ he says.

  But as is the case for any athlete, as Richard grew up there was the inevitable competition for his time. As his swimming improved, he had to choose to concentrate on one of the two sports much of his early life revolved around. In gymnastics he was good enough to be in the regional squad, while in swimming the possibility of international competition and travel beckoned. He chose the pool. And although gymnastics would no longer be a part of his life, he learned invaluable, transferable skills that have never left him.

  A year later, at the World Youth Games in Miami (an event for disabled young athletes), he won five gold medals and one bronze. Not bad for a boy with no legs but it was not enough to make the endless hours of training and competition and the many sacrifices worthwhile. ‘People would say to me you are an amazing athlete, you just haven’t found your sport,’ says Richard, and although he continued to swim throughout the junior ranks and into senior competition, in the end, as with gymnastics, he gave it up.

  So often in sport it is the extraordinary feats of those competing half a continent away that inspire people to change something in their own lives, to be more committed or focused, or to concentrate on setting and achieving a specific goal. For Paralympic athletes the initial process is no different, and for Richard Whitehead it was watching a film about Terry Fox that planted a kernel of an idea.

  Fox was a Canadian runner who, having been diagnosed with cancer, lost his right leg in the late 1970s. He then attempted to run across Canada to raise money and awareness for cancer research. Although he failed to finish the cross-country run and subsequently died from his illness, his efforts captivated Canadians and sparked a worldwide movement, which generated millions in cash for charity and touched countless people across the world.

  By the mid-1990s, Whitehead’s dream was to be able to run on prosthetic legs. The technology existed but the price tag was prohibitive. And then, thanks to the help of a company that designs and makes prosthetics, a pair of running ‘feet’ were donated. Those ‘feet’ enabled him to run and so eventually he took to the streets of New York City for his first marathon in 2004. His time was 5 hours and 19 minutes. After this, his finishing times started to fall dramatically. In 2009, he became the first leg amputee to break the three-hour barrier, finishing in 2:56:45. He has since lowered that world record to 2:42:52.

  Having proved he could become the fastest man in the world, Richard wanted to test this at the ultimate sporting event for disabled athletes, the Paralympic Games. As a double-leg amputee he is classified as a T42 runner, but there is no Marathon at London 2012 for this category because there are not enough elite-level athletes to make a competition viable or credible. So Richard asked the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) if he could race against athletes in the T46 category, which is for arm amputees, at the IPC Athletics World Championships in Christchurch, New Zealand of 2011. This category does have the Marathon event: at London 2012. However, the IPC are committed to ensuring there is a level playing field with athletes competing fairly against other athletes with the same impairment so his request was denied. But true to form, Whitehead’s talent is such that as well as being a long-distance runner, he can also sprint. At the World Championships in New Zealand, in the absence of a Marathon race, he took to the track and won the 200m. His dream of running at the Paralympic Games is very much alive and he will be looking to gain selection to race on the track, particularly over 200m. So whether Whitehead runs long and slow, or short and fast, he has become one of the most recognisable talents in Paralympic sport.

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  Martine Wright would not have chosen to have been catapulted into the spotlight as the 2012 Games approach or once they begin, but all that changed on the morning of 7 July 2005 when she boarded a Circle Line tube train and ended up sitting three feet away from the suicide bomber, Shehzad Tanweer.

  She wouldn’t have been on that tube at all had she stuck to her usual routine but the night before she’d been out with friends celebrating the news th
at London had won the right to host the 2012 Games. She’d been late home and on the morning of 7 July turned her alarm clock off to allow for an extra 10 minutes of snooze time. By the time she did get to the platform, late for work, she jumped on the first train and immersed herself in the day’s paper, which was full of stories about London’s jubilant win.

  Somewhere though, between Liverpool Street and Aldgate stations there was, without warning, a white flash and Martine found herself in the black, acrid remains of a bombed tube carriage. It was the first of the four explosions to go off. Such was the extent of her injuries she was the last to be evacuated and might never have pulled through but for the quick thinking of an off-duty policewoman who made Martine tie something around her leg to staunch the flow of blood. It was this rough-and-ready tourniquet which undoubtedly saved her life. Even so, she entered a coma for over a week and almost died. When she did come round, she realised that under the hospital bed sheet, both her legs had been amputated.

  Over time, as Martine recovered, she tried a number of sports including sitting volleyball which, unlike other sports, involves players sitting on the floor and not being in their chairs. Something about the liberation of it all appealed and now, unbelievably, she’s in line for selection for London 2012.