Stubbs will ‘treasure forever’ honour of leading out country
➤ Archer pays tribute to father as flag bearer with Simmonds ➤ Life saved by 68-pint blood transfusion after road accident
The oldest member of Great Britain’s Paralympics team, who required a 68-pint blood transfusion after being run over twice and had his right leg amputated, will carry the Union Flag tonight in Tokyo in his fourth opening ceremony.
After being elected alongside well-known swimmer Ellie Simmonds, 56-year-old John Stubbs, Britain’s most successful archer with a Paralympic gold medal from 2008 and four world titles, will cap what has already been a life story far greater than any sporting feat.
Stubbs was 24 years old with a newborn son when he survived a traumatic road-traffic accident on his way back from work in 1989.
The man from Warrington was knocked off his motorcycle into a field by one vehicle and then run over by a second, while unconscious, after initially crawling back to the roadside. But for a doctor who was passing the incident in her car, and an ambulance on its way back to the station from a prank call-out, Stubbs believes his life would have ended that night.
“If I had waited for another ambulance, I would have probably died at the scene,” Stubbs said yesterday. “I had to have a 68-pint blood transfusion because I had severed the femoral arteries in both my legs.”
After months of rehabilitation and battling mental health issues, Stubbs turned to binge drinking.
“I felt a burden on my family,” he added. “It was at that point I felt there was only one way out, and that was when I tried suicide.”
He went to a local pond and tried to drown himself, but he had been followed by a neighbour, who dragged him out of the water.
Archery saved the self-confessed rebel, he believes, and the honour of carrying the flag for Great Britain is one the wheelchair user will “treasure forever”. He added: “I never realised at the time where it would actually take me, and now I’ve been across the world with it.
“It made me realise that I’ve been very fortunate in my life as a disabled person. It has made me a success.”
Tokyo 2020 will be, as it is for Simmonds, Stubbs’s fourth Paralympic Games, having won gold in the individual compound event at Beijing 2008 and silver in the mixed team compound eight years later at Rio 2016. “It’s an absolute honour to be representing Paralympicsgb as flag-bearer alongside Ellie,” said Stubbs yesterday.
“I felt incredibly emotional when I was told the news. For any elite athlete to go to the Games and be bestowed this honour is a privilege. “Words can’t describe what it means to me.
“It’s been a torrid year – unfortunately I lost my dad in January. He was my biggest fan, and hopefully if he’s looking down on me, he’s there saying, ‘Do it for the Stubbs family John, you’ve earned it and you deserve it’. “I know my family will be as proud as punch.”