Golden couple pull each other through their highs and lows
Britain’s Stef Reid tells Gareth A Davies how she and Canadian husband unite in quest for gold
They are the Mr and Mrs of Para Athletics, Great Britain’s long-jumper Stef Reid and her husband, Brent Lakatos, the Canadian wheelchair racer. In life, and in a shared history, they have so much that binds them, beyond love and marriage. For a start, they are both elite Paralympic athletes, after accidents in their youth changed their lives. Irreparably so.
Reid almost lost her life, aged 16, when the propeller from a motor boat cut through her right leg, while Lakatos was involved in a freak ice-skating accident at the age of six which resulted in the formation of a blood clot on his spine that left his legs paralysed.
Lakatos, initially training in Dallas after their marriage in 2008 where he was also working as a software engineer, moved to Loughborough University to train and be with his wife in 2013.
“Brent eventually followed me over to the UK,” explained Reid, the silver medallist at both London and Rio in the T44 long jump, in which the 32-year-old competes this morning. Reid has an opportunity to claim gold at the World Para Athletics Championships today but it will be a close contest between the British athlete and the Dutchwoman Marlene van Gansewinkel, just seven centimetres separated the silver and bronze medal positions in Rio. “It sucked being married and not even living in the same city. We didn’t want to be apart any more,” Reid said. “So we based ourselves in Loughborough, which has been really good for both of us. For Brent, being located on the European circuit has meant he’s been able to access many more high-level races and he has improved every year.”
But it is as tough as it is rewarding, explained Reid, with two athletes at the peak of their sports experiencing the highs and lows under the same roof. “It can be the best thing and the worst thing in the world – we both have a front-row seat to what the other person is doing and experiencing. At any championships, I have my best friend and my biggest supporter there around the corner. But in the same way you are dealing with the highs, you are dealing with the lows – the emotional puke, for want of a better word.
“There have been really hard times. Like 2013, which was a horrible year for me and Brent had a fantastic year, and at the world
‘At championships, I have my best friend and biggest supporter there around the corner’
champs. He won his first gold and he didn’t want to celebrate in front of me. ‘Let’s celebrate now I’ll cry when I get home,’ I told him. It’s as tough as it is great, but I also can’t imagine it being any other way. Going through it all together is so special. Not many marriages, many couples, get to do this for a period in their life together.”
Certainly, both have had incredible, inspirational lives. “What we have both been through in our lives does lend itself to a deeper connection,” explained Reid. “My accident changed me in so many ways. Aged 16, I thought I was going to die, and it put life into perspective at a very young age.
“It’s not like I necessarily changed as a person, but my values changed, in that moment in the ambulance wondering if I was going to make it. Brent’s been through that – spent a lot of his life as an underdog – and when you have been given an opportunity, you take it with both hands, whether it is in sport or as a software engineer, as he is. I think our relationship is really special in that sense.”
Lakatos has grown stronger physically and, at 37, has a gold medal from Rio in the T53 100m, and has broken world records five times this year in his events, with seven world championship titles to his name. “Brent is really special. He trained as an engineer and is very technologically minded. I don’t know anyone like him. He’s amazing. That’s why I married him.”
Lakatos, the bearded racer who competes in the first of his five events tomorrow, said: “We are trying to do the best we can in multiple different areas. I am trying to be the best racer I can. Stef is trying to be the best long jumper she can. That pulls us in different directions. We’re also trying to be the best partner for each other we can.”