Tanni Grey-thompson wins quadruple gold in Barcelona
“My parents didn’t let anyone discriminate against me. My dad would say if you’re not happy, don’t just sit there – do something about it. And my mum always used to say you were given a tongue in your head for a reason.”
Baroness Grey-thompson took that advice and flew, acquiring a litany of honours: MBE, OBE, DBE, DL. But it was back in 1992 when her Paralympic story first took off and people around the world saw her talent.
Grey-thompson built up to her annus mirabilis in 1992 with gold medals in the 100 metres, 200m and marathon at the World Wheelchair Games the year before. After returning from time out in late 1991 for back surgery, she became the first British woman to go under two hours and win the London Marathon which raised her profile significantly.
Tickets for the ninth Paralympics in Barcelona were hugely popular and attracted 1.5 million spectators, providing a platform for future Games growth. Grey-thompson thrived in the arena, and at the age of 23, broke four world records at one event, winning gold medals in the T53 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m.
Born in Cardiff in 1969 and christened Carys Davina, her elder sister nicknamed her “Tiny” but mispronounced it “Tanni” and it has stuck for more than half a century. Born with spina bifida, she was paralysed by the age of seven.
Her parents had to win an argument with the local authority, who wanted her to attend a specialist school for disabled students, to be able to send her to St Cyres Comprehensive in Penarth where she continued to try a variety of sports before settling on wheelchair racing when she was 13.
Her parents’ approach, very much from the “get stuck in” school of positive enablement, was a constant source of support, stressing capabilities rather than limits.
It took only two years for her to win the 100m at the Junior National Wheelchair Games and by 19 she was at the Seoul Paralympics, winning bronze in the 400m.
As well as skill, sheer speed and competitive zeal, she had a knack for conveying her thrill in the visceral battle of elite sport. “Wheelchair racing can be dangerous, fierce, bitter and frightening,” she wrote, and by showing us with every turn of the wheel and talking about it in such terms it helped transform perceptions about Paralympic sport and demolish prejudices about its tweely, wholesome nature.
Following her quadruple success at the Barcelona Games, her election as Sportswoman of the Year for 1992 was thoroughly deserved but was also a landmark moment for Paralympic sport.
The medals kept coming after she graduated from Loughborough University, three silvers and a gold in Atlanta, the same four golds in Sydney that she had won in Barcelona. Golds in the 100m and 400m in her fifth Games at Athens, after the birth of her daughter, plus five more London Marathons and enough world records to take her career total above 30.
Appointed a cross-bench peer whose valuable work on disability rights, welfare reform and sport since 2010 have consumed four days of her working week for more than a decade, Greythompson’s second career has continued to confound assumptions. She went to the Lords seeing it not as a sinecure but to effect change.
She has never had time for those who characterise her achievements in the context of what she has had to overcome. As Grey-thompson points out about the plague of nauseating pre-race nerves she suffered in Athens, hers are everyday concerns. In confronting the disgusting discrimination she suffered when pregnant and her focus on the practicalities of reform, the victories, after retirement from competition, rank alongside the gilded glory of her first career.
“Aim high, even if you hit a cabbage,” she says, employing her grandad’s favourite motto. Having a goal and the tenacity to keep striving for it has taken her farther than anyone in her sport, with more still to come in this second act.