Reid stretches limits in pursuit of new ice goal
The Paralympian has retired from athletics but is now facing her greatest sporting challenge, writes Molly Mcelwee
Stef Reid, a four-time Paralympian, won two silver medals and a bronze in sprinting and long jump and was awarded an MBE for services to sport. But, even with her credentials in elite competition, she is not afraid to get back to basics. It is how she found herself at the National Ice Centre in Nottingham, being coached alongside a group of 10-year-olds.
“There’s me with my new posse that are probably thinking, ‘Who on earth is this old lady with an artificial leg in our class?’ ” she says with a laugh. “You can see the parents are wondering, ‘What is she doing?’ But I love it.”
Reid, 38, is not your average retired athlete. While she may have followed a long line of retirees in taking up athletics punditry in this next chapter of her career, she has also discovered a love for a new sport: figure skating. Her stint on Dancing on Ice last year, when she reached the quarter-finals, gave her a new focus and her latest goal may be her most challenging yet: become the first person with a prosthetic leg to land a single rotation jump on the ice.
To do that, she has happily immersed herself in British Ice Skating’s pathway, mucking in alongside the youngsters. She is believed to be the first person with a disability to pass the BIS Level One skills test. “I passed the first time,” she says proudly.
Reid is taking on the sport’s levels step by step, assessed on her ability to do certain skills or hit certain marks like any other skater. In marking this new territory, she is also working with
BIS as an ambassador to ensure that its pathways are as inclusive as can be.
Some elements to skills tests may not be possible for athletes with certain disabilities, and in those scenarios, she says, there needs to be a balance between pushing new joiners to succeed and bending some of the strict criteria if necessary.
BIS has an action plan to improve diversity and inclusivity in the sport, and is already relaunching its introductory Skate UK course, collaborating with Activity Alliance to produce a pathway that allows more flexibility on the pass criteria and how the coach delivers the session.
“For example, it would be ridiculous if I was marked down for not pointing my toe on an artificial leg, that’s just silly, so they’re making these sorts of accommodations,” she says. “I’ve had the most wonderful experience at Nottingham. None of them had ever coached anyone with an artificial leg but they were so up for it. If I couldn’t do something, their first response was never, ‘Oh, she can’t do it’. It was always, ‘Keep trying, no one can do it the first time – why would you think you could?’.” After an athletics life spent sprinting with a prosthetic and then jumping into a sand pit, learning the delicate and dangerous art of dancing in skates has pushed Reid to her very limits. From a practical perspective, she needed to work with her prosthetist to create a prosthetic that would work for her on the ice.
She also needed to adjust mentally to a sport where, for all her athleticism, she never felt fully in control.
“It was without doubt the hardest physical thing I have ever done in my life,” Reid says of the five months of intensive training for ITV’S Dancing on Ice.
“I’ve never been in an environment where I have felt so little confidence in what I can do. Imagine if you’re told to drive your car on black ice. I just never quite knew what my edges were going to do [in my right foot], because I just couldn’t feel them.
“I was struggling with basic things like stopping, which is so foundational. But my professional partner realised, wait a second, she doesn’t have a foot or ankle – why am I teaching her with the same kind of sequencing as an able-bodied person?
“We chucked the standardised stuff out and he started teaching me in a slightly different way. As
soon as that happened, it just really unlocked things for me. I went from being terrible to being a surprise contender. Just because the standard way doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t mean that you don’t fit the sport. You just need to find a different way to do it.”
She now skates twice a week, and is speaking here after an afternoon on the ice, revelling in the joy of having the rink to herself during school hours. Her passion for her new recreational pastime is clear, partly because it is giving her another level of understanding and appreciation for all that her body can do. It is 22 years since Reid lost her right foot in a boating accident, but she says skating has forced her to find new “trust” in her prosthetic leg, and that the sport could help others with similar disabilities.
“Walking in everyday life, I probably spend about 60 per cent of my time on my good leg and 40 per cent on my artificial leg,” she explains. “I can get away with that on land, but you can’t get away with it skating – you won’t move if you don’t learn to trust that leg and put your faith in it. So, it is actually a brilliant sport for somebody with a disability to learn about their body and learn how to move.”
While figure skating does not feature at the Winter Paralympics, since her appearance on Dancing on Ice Reid has had dozens of messages from youngsters with similar disabilities who have taken up the sport. She hopes it has “planted a seed” on that front, and that more see the sport as something they can try.
As for her latest personal challenge, she is still working on it. “What I really want to do now is land a single rotation jump. It’s pretty much impossible to do it taking off from my artificial leg, which means I’m going to have to land it on my artificial leg, which has a bunch of challenges because I’ll have no control over the landing. Everything will have to be perfect.”