Weirwolf by David Weir Read Free Book Online Page A

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 wasgiven 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