Tully Kearney MBE Journey | Proveca & CP Sport

Intro like all my whole life had been working up to being an athlete and going to private games had always been my goal and everything had been taken away at once and I wasn't really sure what to do and what I would do now [Music] How Tully got into sport look glance through your CV you have 17 European world and paralympic medals stretching over the last nine years and two paralympic medals one silver and one gold meaning you are the reigning Olympic 100 meter freestyle S5 champion and now Tully Kearney mbu can you take us back to the beginning how you first got into sport so initially I actually hated the water it was used as hydrotherapy so for me growing up I always wanted to be physically active and do everything my older brother could but my older brother doesn't have a disability and I just couldn't keep up with him he joined a swimming club and basically I just spent most of my evenings on poolside watching him swim until when I was about eight the coach came up to me and said do you want to join in and when I got in the water I suddenly realized that I could keep up with kids my age it was something I could do that my brother could do and I didn't feel disabled I could do everything myself I didn't need help I just fell in love with it and eventually it became my coping a mechanism so if I had a rough day or I was frustrated about what I couldn't do I'd get in the water and everything would just disappear The Pandemic it was weird being a part of the games during a pandemic it didn't really feel like a brand of the games I went into it with an injury so I was quite nervous I'd have to withdraw again and it was a little bit stressful for me but once I got into the first day of racing I think all that just disappeared and my love for the sport just came back and I just really enjoyed it [Music] World Championships so we had the World Championships earlier on in the year in Madeira and that was a really cool experience I went and retained my three World titles but I also broke three World Records in my three swims so yeah I was pretty pleased with that we've got the World Championships next year in Manchester that's really exciting obviously being my home pool I've trained that for many years and hopefully retain my world titles again but the biggest thing that I'm aiming towards now is Paris and my goal is to never be beaten again Dystonia with having dystonia my dystonia got a lot worse in the 2015-16 season triggered by an injury so unfortunately I had to withdraw from Rio because of that I lost my place to train I lost my funding and at that point I wasn't an athlete my whole life had been working up to being an athlete and going to private games had always been my goal and everything had been taken away at once and I wasn't really sure what to do and what I would do now for me I didn't really want to get back into swimming because I thought well if I try and I realize I can't swim anymore that's going to be devastating so what if I just never try and then after about six months my mum made me realize that that was quite a silly thing and I don't know how but she just knew that I'd figure it out and I basically started in the learn to swim Lane tried to figure out what movement I had and how I could swim and over about a period of a year I went from alone to swim Lane up to the quickest lane and then in 2018 I started to receive Manchester again and I made the team of Europeans and I think I shocked everyone [Music] so I had to be reclassified for my new level of disability so I started as an S9 and then when I was reclassified I'm now an S5 I think once I went to Europeans and got a golden LeBrons it kind of made me realize well actually maybe I still can go to Japan Olympics maybe this is still an option for me and since then I've just been like well what what can I do how can I show other people that are going through struggles or cerebral palsy or dystonia or whatever it may be but you can still achieve things even when you've got a really tough time CP Sport yeah CP sport do such great work it's really important I think the biggest one is that all their events everyone there has cerebral palsy I think a lot of kids are at State schools where they might be the only disabled child so they're coming together at an event where you can be around a load of people with cerebral palsy I think it's just nice to see someone similar like yourself that you know you're not going for it alone Leos Story so Leo has cerebral palsy he is non-verbal and he has quadriplegic cerebral palsy which means that he doesn't really have much use of his hands either and he can't sit and aided and he is such a happy little boy he uses an electric wheelchair but because he can't sit he didn't have a walker he didn't have any way of getting around so I was able to borrow a frame runner from the Manchester frame running club and he borrowed it for three months and by the end of it he was running circles around in the garden he absolutely loves his so I decided to fundraise to buy him his own frame and he now has his own frame Runner but it made me quite sad that it took that long for him to find something that he can do and I really think that kids as young as three four five should be able to access the right equipment so they can get into sport I think that's really important to start at young age and it's made such a difference to Leo's life having frame running and just finally what's the most memorable moment in sports so far obviously the Tokyo is a big one going and when they're playing at the medal but it's not really the fact that I won a medal it's the fact that I'd always wanted to call myself paralympian and I thought that that dream was over but the fact that um with a lot of help and support from people especially my mum I was able to actually go and achieve my dreams and the fact that I was able to overcome everything and work through it even when there was so many times when I wanted to give up the thing that I'm most proud of is pushing through and actually achieving what I set out to achieve foreign