Interview 2 with the wheelchair racer Tanni Grey-Thompson

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TANNI GREY-THOMPSON
a wheelchair racer’s tale 2 (9 October 2012 / Cardiff)


london 2012

The Olympics and Paralympics were absolutely amazing. They were better than I ever hoped or I think wished that they would be. There was sort of a feeling, in the first few days of the Games, that it was okay and the organisation was fine but we needed medals to come, and when the Olympic medals started coming, it was amazing. The atmosphere in the city, the park, the venues, people were talking to each other on the tube, people were going around the city hugging each other. Never again in my lifetime will I have the opportunity to hi-five an armed policeman, because that’s what they were doing as you were leaving the village, they were hi-fiving all the kids. Building the venues, making it happen, that was amazing. But also, if you look at the performances of the athletes, it was out of this world and I think it shows how important sport is to the athletes but also to the public, that they came out in their droves and packed every single venue.


what an entrance!

I spent about the last seven years sitting on little committees but the really fun thing that I got to do was to be part of the Opening Ceremony. I had a phone call saying, “Would you like to be involved?” and, of course, you say, “Yes”, and they said to me, “It’s a bit quirky, it’s a little bit different, it’s a bit artistic”, and I’m, “Okay”. My family weren’t going to be coming to the Opening Ceremony so I rushed out and I bought more tickets and then I found out that it involved me being on a wire, quite high up in the air. We had three rehearsals, the first one I went up in the air and I was clinging on to the wires, going, “How high am I?” And they said, “Six inches above the ground!” I went, “Oh, okay”, and then the next one was right up in the stadium and it was amazing. It was brilliant, terrifying, scarey. I am never going on a zip wire ever again as long as I live, but to be there on the night and to be up over the athletes’ faces and to be able to see people … That was worth it! Three and a half minutes of being terrified but it was amazing because I think the Ceremony just set the whole tone for the Paralympic Games.


proud

It was really interesting being there, sort of working on the other side, working with the media and commentating, a lot of fun. I don’t think the public realise how many hours you’re there for! The Paralympics, I was pretty much there for every single bit of athletics, from nine o’clock in the morning to eleven o’clock at night. It was great to be so close and to watch everything, to watch some amazing performances, seeing Aled Davies win and David Weir, just fantastic performances … and then you remember that you’re supposed to be working and you’re meant to talk some sense about it. But it was a huge amount of fun to be sitting that close to the action. I’m really proud of everything that they did.


not your moment anymore

There’s a tiny part of me that would have liked to have competed in London but then, very quickly, you wake up and realise that to compete in London you have to be training incredibly hard and racing and always away from home and I was done with that. My career was so finished when I came to the end of it. I knew that that was it. I never ever wanted to do it again, so realistically no, it was never going to happen. Okay, there’s bit when you see the crowd and you think that’s nice, but I’ve competed in front of 110,000 people. That’s your moment and then it’s not your moment any more, and actually I think I had a pretty good time of it. As an athlete, you know, you’re so focused on what you do. You don’t really get to enjoy it that much, so for me I just had a blast at the Games. It was the best thing I ever did in my life, so I was quite happy where I was.


not watching the chairs

During the Games, the public were buzzing. People were coming up to me saying, “I only got tickets for the Paralympics because I couldn’t get Olympic tickets but it was amazing”. People were coming up to me saying, “It’s changed my view of disability, it’s changed my view of impairment”. We weren’t watching the blades or the chairs, we were watching the sports performance, and that’s really special. I overheard two girls talking on the tube about Oscar Pistorius and Johnny Peacock and they were talking about who was the cutest. That is something that never would have happened even a few years ago and that’s amazing, but it’s not going to change the whole world’s attitude towards disabled people. It’s changed a lot of people’s views, a lot of people are much more positive but the reality is that disabled people still experience quite a lot of discrimination and it’s quite hard out there for a number of disabled people. Children having watched the Games, they’re the ones; we won’t see the benefit for maybe another two generations.


it’s about the athletes

I think there’s lots of things we can do to make sure we have a legacy of the Games. If it’s a sporting legacy, making sure governing bodies, coaches, volunteers work together in a really positive way and that will have a really positive effect on disabled people. But I think it’s about the athletes going out there and talking about their experiences and them continuing to spread a message of how positive that feeling was.


doing it for two countries

Welsh athletes always compete really well as part of a GB team. They compete well when they’re at the Commonwealth Games but there is something special about being a Welsh athlete; you feel that you’re doing it for two countries almost. You’re doing it for GB and you’re also doing it for Wales.

We’ve got a great tradition at sport, in sports development and coaching, and we’ve got this huge passion for sport and it doesn’t matter if you grew up in Wales or you lived in Wales, you know, you’re out of Wales, you’re always Welsh. That is always there as part of you and that’s what makes the guys train so hard. It’s because they want to do it for Wales and for GB.


watching nathan

It was really hard watching Nathan Stephens compete because I’ve known him since he was a young lad and he’s trying so hard and having watched him win the World Championship in New Zealand. I was trackside and that was an amazing moment but there was no one there watching, just a handful of people. It’s sport. Sport’s miserable when you don’t achieve the things that you want to or the things that you can. It’s really really miserable. It’s the best moment of your life and it’s the worst moment of your life. As I was leaving the stadium, I saw him and went up to him and just said, “Are you alright?”, and neither of us could really speak to each other and I gave him a hug and said, “You’ll be alright. You’ll come back. It’s okay”. He’s one of those guys who trains hard, does everything he can. It wasn’t his moment but it will be his moment. He will have that moment to show the world how good he is.


games-makers

My best moment of the Paralympics is so hard to pick because there’s sport performance, transport went right. It’s kind of the Games-makers actually. When you left the stadium every night, they used to line up and you could walk past them and high five them and they were happy, they were cheerful, they were all working really long hours in some very unglamorous jobs and they came back and back and back.

For those people, the Games will have changed their lives forever. They will never be the same people again. I know that because so many wrote and told me and emailed me and stopped me in the street and said, “Hi, I was a Games-maker”. It’s a huge thank you to those guys because without them the Games wouldn’t have happened, so if it’s one thing it’s them. They set the tone for the athletes, the spectators, for everyone else to follow.