Dame Tanni ‘lost for words’ after train incident
PARALYMPIC champion Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson has said she was stopped from getting on a train after a member of the public told her there was “no room for her”.
The 48-year-old peer, from Cardiff, revealed on social media that she had been left on a platform after the incident yesterday.
She said: “Merry Christmas to the person on the train who just stopped me getting on. Told member of staff ‘there’s no room for her’.
“Everyone else waiting on the platform got on.”
In a separate tweet, Baroness GreyThompson said: “It’s because I’m in a wheelchair. Nothing to do with title. There was room. Person wouldn’t move”.
The 11-time Paralympic gold medallist, who bagged more than 30 world records in an astonishing track career, is now a House of Lords peer.
She said she was “lost for words” at the incident, and it was only afterwards she got annoyed. She said everyone else on the platform managed to get on the train.
While the social media update prompted plenty of responses, Baroness Grey-Thompson later took to Twitter to praise members of staff.
Of the incident, she said: “It was a tweet about a moment in time.”
She added: “So many disabled people get way worse than this every day. Surprised that this is one of most minor thing I’ve tweeted and it’s got the reaction it has.”
One Twitter follower told her: “They’re paid to look after the passengers, Tanni. If they can’t look after you, the very definition of a ‘national treasure’, what hope is there for anyone else?”
Another added: “All human beings deserve fair treatment whatever their status may be.”
Dame Tanni concluded: “I should have the same rights as a non disabled person to be squashed on a busy train. End of.”