Weirwolf by David Weir Read Free Book Online

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 longtime. 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 fortheir 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 shealways backed me. She would watch how I trained and give me little tips and she was always checking I was OK. To