Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson is Britian’s most decorated Paralympic athlete.  In a career spanning six Paralympic Games – one more than Olympic great Sir Steve Redgrave – she amassed 16 medals, 11 of them gold in wheelchair racing.

Thompson, from Wales, is an inspiration to disabled athletes, able-bodies athletes and even non-athletes.  Having been born with spina bifida, a developmental birth defect which has severely limited her mobility for her whole life.  Yet, she became the best wheelchair racer in the world.

In her first Paralympics, she took a bronze medal in the 400m at the 1988 Seoul Games.  Four years later in Barcelona she was unstoppable, winning four golds for each of the short-distance races – 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m.  On top of that, she hlped the British team to a silver in the 4x100m.

Tanni went on to take three silvers (100m, 200m and 400m) in Atlanta 1996, and one gold in the 800m.  An impressive haul, but not up to the standards she had set in Spain.  In Sydney 2000 she was back to her dominant self, reclaiming the four golds in the same events as she had won them in 1992.

In her final Olympics, in Athens in 2004, Grey-Thompson collected a further two golds in the 100m and 400m.  Incredibly, however, throughout this 16-year period of Paralympic supremacy, she was also making her mark on that other institution of athletic endeavour, the London Marathon.  Between 1992 and 2002, at the peak of her sprinting career, she also succeed in winning the world’s most famous 26.2 mile race six times.

Yes, that’s right.  Imagine the day that Usain Bolt wins the New-York Marathon, or Haile Gebrselassie runs 9.7seconds in the 100m, and that gives you an idea of the versatility of brilliance that Tanni Grey-Thompson displayed.

In The Winning Zone caught up with the UK’s most iconic Paralympian to talk about what really matters to her... Winning...

WZ: How would you describe a winner?

TG-T: At the top level, for me a winner is someone who works within the moral framework of their sport, and is an elite athlete, and does it with style.  But a winner doesn’t have to be someone who wins medals. 

WZ: If a young person says they want to be a great athlete like Tanni Grey-Thompson, what would suggest they do?

TG-T: I would find a good coach, and work hard.  You have to have some natural talent, but a lot of it is about training really hard.  You have to be really honest with yourself about how hard you train.  It comes down to the person. 

If you think it’s too hard and you get demotivated really easily, maybe sport isn’t the right path for you, if every time it doesn’t work out or you don’t win a race you say it is too hard.

Actually I sometimes think being good at sport means sometimes being slightly stupid, slightly naive, slightly bloody-minded, stubborn and selfish.

WZ: How do you inspire young people to aim high and achieve everything they are capable of?

TG-T: I think a lot of it has got to come from the athlete.  The athlete has got to want to do it.  If you can see the glint in the eye and the passion, it is easier.  You can’t make a young athlete want it.  I’ve worked with athletes who were really talented, but they haven’t had that fire, and you can’t make them have it.  It has to be inside.

WZ: Was there ever a point in your career you thought ‘this is just impossible?’

TG-T: There were a few times when I had to dig in, but there was never a point that I didn’t want to do it, until I retired.  There was never a point that I didn’t want to do it more than anything else. 

WZ: What kept you going through all those years of competing?

TG-T: Winning.  Being the best I could, and beating my husband, because I wanted to go quicker than him!!

RO
© Copyright In The Winning Zone, MMVIII, All Rights Reserved