Triple Olympian backing himself to win his bravest battle of all
Pete Reed is fighting back from his spinal paralysis in typically defiant fashion, writes Oliver Brown
At the height of his rowing powers, Pete Reed was a wonder of human physiology, blessed with one of the largest lung capacities ever recorded by man.
But, in the pale winter light of a garden adjoining Salisbury District Hospital, he accepts that he might never walk again. Three months on from a devastating spinal stroke, Reed, a triple Olympic champion, remains paralysed from the chest down. He is just 38 years old, and for all his tireless efforts at convalescence, his output on the exercise bike has stayed stubbornly at zero watts. “The muscles aren’t completely flaccid, and I can see them twitching, but it’s not enough to put a single watt down,” he says. “Brutal.”
In his wheelchair, Reed, who stands 6ft 6in at full height, is a diagram of stoicism, displaying not a shred of self-pity. Courtesy of his background as a decorated Olympian, and the sangfroid befitting a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy, he perceives his ordeal less as a calamity than as another hurdle to be vaulted. He does not shirk the awkward conversations, either. Perhaps the frankest came with his girlfriend, Jeannie, when he told her he would understand if the prospect of nursing and supporting him seemed too overwhelming. “We’re not married, and she’s 31,” Reed says, matter-of-factly, in his first newspaper interview since the stroke. “I wouldn’t blame her. She told me off for asking those questions, with a smile and a big hug. This situation is probably harder for her than it is for me.”
The couple’s resilience is such that last weekend, at a far earlier stage in his recovery than doctors would usually advise, they took a trip to London, to watch a performance of E.T. in Concert at the Royal Albert Hall. It was draining, yet cathartic. Reed’s lack of movement meant that they could no longer access his former flat in Chiswick, but to preserve a semblance of normality they spent the night at a hotel nearby.
If their defiance of his uncertain prognosis lifts the soul, then the details of how Reed reached this point just about break the heart. It was on September 2, in the midst of a gruelling commando course with the Royal Marines, that he first noticed his body was failing him. The symptoms began with a tightening of the chest, and a bout of pins and needles in his legs, causing him to suspect a trapped nerve. By evening, he noticed an abnormality about his gait, before discovering he could no longer pass water. Despite these multiplying alarms, his singlemindedness persuaded him that he could sleep it off.
“I stumbled out of bed the next morning like Bambi,” he reflects. “I had to steady myself with my hands. I walked to the shower and I couldn’t pee again. The medic on the course said, “That’s a red flag. Get yourself down to hospital.” I was still in uniform, not knowing what was going on.
“After an MRI and a CAT scan, they suspected that I had suffered a small spinal stroke. They gave me an aspirin and kept me in for observations. That was on Wednesday. By Friday, my leg strength was improving, to the point where I could do lunges and calf raises. One of the patients said that I didn’t look ill enough to be there. I didn’t feel it, either. I thought that I might even go back on the course. But then the same thing happened, in the same place on my spine. This time, the intensity dial was maxed out. It was extraordinary pain, followed by a total numbness.”
Medical wisdom is divided on what precisely triggers these events, which lead to an interruption of the blood supply to the spinal cord. The chances of such an episode, while exceedingly low, can be heightened by a narrowing of the arteries brought on by obesity or heart disease. And
‘I fell out of bed like Bambi. I walked to the shower and I couldn’t pee again. It was a red flag.’
yet Reed, with his freakish levels of cardiovascular health, did not fit into any of the at-risk groups. To the outside observer, it might appear doubly tormenting that he will, in all likelihood, never know the reason why he has been robbed of so many of his freedoms.
Typically, Reed, who has already divided his days carefully into rehab sessions and diary-keeping, does not quite see it this way, reasoning: “There’s a potential pitfall of asking, ‘Why me, what did I do wrong?’ I look back through life and I’ve done at best, brave and bold things, at worst reckless. I’ve been very lucky, given my attitude to flinging my body around. If I had been injured in that way, it would be hard to live with, because it was my decision to rock-climb, or to clamber across high walls. Somehow, this is easier.”
The reckoning has been, if anything, more traumatic for his friends, for rowing. There is a story that Jurgen Grobler, the redoubtable German coach who propelled him to gold medals at three successive Games, was deeply upset when he first visited Reed in hospital, seeing for himself his cruelly altered circumstances. When I ask Reed about this, he grimaces slightly, the emotion of the recent encounter bubbling to the surface.
“It’s a fair question,” he says. “We were so close, for so long, almost every day together for 14 years. Jurgen knew my body very well. I’m not 6ft 6in any more, but I get used to it. It’s a question of having to, to build up my life
‘We’re very honest with each other. We wheel out of our rooms, naked. There’s no hiding.’
confidence. But still, when people see you for the first time, they react differently, and I don’t blame them for doing so. It was probably hardest for Jurgen.”
In his pomp, Reed was an astonishing athlete, winning gold with the coxless four in Beijing and again at London 2012, before completing the trilogy with the eight in Rio. In rowing, only Sir Steve Redgrave and Sir Matthew Pinsent have enjoyed greater success on the grandest stage. Despite that prodigious CV, Reed, who like most elite rowers is the antithesis of a celebrity, has reset his life goals with humility.
“It could sound a silly thing to say, but I feel that I have a good balance at the moment of positive attitude and realism,” he explains. “I’m not saying that I’m going to be running marathons or clambering up mountains again. Some things, like commando action, I’m pretty sure are ruled out.
“Can I walk again? I don’t know. But I back myself.”
On the ward, it will never be, as he puts it, “the Pete Reed show”. While one fellow patient has marvelled tearfully at his strength in the face of the most daunting odds, the spirit in hospital, he says, is one of collective support. “Spinal cord injuries don’t discriminate. They affect all ages, all demographics. We’re all very honest with each other. We wheel ourselves out of our rooms, naked, and have a shower, so there’s not much to hide.
“The people here are ever so brave. I’ve got my hands, my brain’s still ticking over. Others are not so lucky. My injury was in the T6/T7 section of the spine. If it’s five vertebrae higher, that’s tetraplegia: no arms, no control of the diaphragm. I have to be grateful for what I still have.”
Reed does not always sugar the pill. He admits that Jeannie is struggling to combine a full-time job with driving over to see him in a clapped-out car, and longs for the day when they “can have time sleeping in the same bed, watching a film or cooking together”. Wistfully, he says: “We just want something that resembles a sustainable reality. Something fulfilling, which makes us both happy. It can be very easy to lose sight of what we’re working towards.”
For all Reed’s resolve to recapture his lost independence, there is no doubt that he will require the constant kindness of others on the tortuous path ahead. Soon, he will be transferred to Stanford Hall, a military rehabilitation centre near Loughborough, while Andrew Triggs Hodge, his long-time crewmate in the men’s four, has launched a crowdfunding campaign to help finance his treatment.
“I’ve got every right still to be in bed, feeling down,” Reed acknowledges. “But my support network has inspired me to get out of bed every day, to have a shave, to face up to failure and challenge. It’s a horrible thing that’s happened, and I wouldn’t choose it, but it could be so much worse. And I think I can deal with that.”
It is true to his indomitable nature that from the darkest chapter of his life, Reed is determined, no matter how long it takes, to find a sense of grace.