Could it be a golden year for Stedman?
He’s got the bronze, he’s got the silver. Now William Stedman is gunning to complete the Paralympics trifecta and bring home the gold.
It’s a massive year ahead for the Christchurch athlete, who is competing in both the men’s T36 400m and long jump events at his fifth World Para Athletics Championships next month in Japan – the curtain-raiser for the Paralympic Games in Paris later this year, which will be Stedman’s third.
It’s unusual for the two world events to fall in the same calendar, the result of a snowball effect from Covid delays and postponements. It means his electrical engineering university textbooks have been shelved for a brief pause this year to allow him to focus on track and field.
But the hard work is paying off. Stedman, 24, said he was feeling fitter, faster and stronger than ever, particularly in the long jump, on which he’s focused heavily over the last six months.
“My goal this year really is to jump over 6m in a long jump – that would be a world record in my classification,” he said.
It would also be an increase of more than 25cm on his current personal best. But with such a “tight field” amongst the world’s best jumpers, Stedman said even a world record might not guarantee the gold. “The top eight or 10 could all win it, really.”
His long jump takeoff had seen the most improvements, he said, and the technical changes he had made were “starting to click”.
It progressed from a “mushy” technique, which saw his legs collapse forward, to attempting to almost pole vault off his leg to transfer speed into more lift.
“It’s very hard to actually make your body do that, especially when you're moving near your top speed, [but] over the last three weeks or so it’s started to improve a lot.”
Transferable skills of speed, strength and power also benefit his efforts on the running track, though they don’t help with the challenge of timetable scheduling – a problem that is particular to multi-event athletes.
At the Paralympics, Stedman, who has cerebral palsy, will tackle the long jump on one evening before the 400m final takes place the next morning. “For recovery, it’s not ideal,” he said.
Despite that, Stedman said he felt “capable” of beating his fastest time of 53.55 seconds and longest jump of 5.73m.
The trophy cabinet so far holds a silver medal in the long jump and a bronze in the 400m from the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. As the youngest member of the New Zealand Paralympics team in Rio, at 16, he also flourished at his first Games, with two bronzes in the 400m and 800m events.
He also scooped a further three silvers and a bronze at previous Para Athletics World Championships.
Chasing gold is a dream first inspired by watching the 2012 games on TV.
“I saw people with cerebral palsy – the same disability as me – running and thought, ‘Woah, that looks pretty cool’, and that was when it clicked,” Stedman said.
“In the [Games] village, it’s kind of one of the only places where disabled people are a majority ... its definitely a unique and unforgettable experience.”