Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson DBE - Life After Sport

[Music] you're listening to the DSW podcast with James [Music] Ledger Chau welcome to the disability sport whes podcast with me your host James Ledger today I've got a very special guest this person is in multiple and I mean multiple world and Par Olympic medalist he's a patron for disability sport Wales and she's also the chair of sport Wales this person is incredibly inspiring and a role model for many including myself so I'm so pleased to have on the show baroness Tanny gry Thompson how you doing Tanny I'm really good thank you how are you good thank you so much for joining us I know you're a you're a very very busy lady oh that was great um I mean I was at one of your previous recordings podcast sitting in the audience so uh it was brilliant so it was nice to kind of be asked the questions now as opposed to listening absolutely think that disabled young leaders event wasn't it did the live show you were there which is which is amazing it was brilliant and um it's it's really important to to listen to lots of different voices but also you know young people and just given them a chance to you know expand their Horizons think about what they might do differently and you know get get them involved in in lots of different things so uh yeah it was brilliant absolutely now Tanny you know you wear no sometimes I think I wear a lot of hats but you you got a Wardrobe full of hats that you wear all different roles and different kind of positions you're in which is I don't know how you do it you know it's huge props to you for your time management must be exceptional um it's it's mostly pretty good I mean a lot of stuff I do kind of interlinks with each other so you know it's uh you know I do a lot of disability rights work you know uh apologies you know on social media I mostly just post about trains uh a little bit about how disabled people are treated in society um you know and that kind of fits into the sport physical activity disabled people need to be fit and healthy and active and if they play sport at high level that's great but you know they need to be active and and so a lot of stuff just automatically connects to to the other so I'm very lucky um you know I I had a lot of fun being an athlete but I'm really lucky I I love my my second career that's amazing to see and know it's some career both on the track and and off it as well let me let me bring it back to the to to that know as an athlete now where where did it start for you and and how did you get involved in in sport well I grew up in Cardiff uh my dad played quite a lot of sport my mom watched quite a lot of sport um and I was born with Spiner BF I could walk a little bit when I was young but by the age of five I was paralyzed um because uh my vertebrae doesn't protect my spinal cord and my spine collapsed and then my vertebra severed my spinal cord um and so my parents just knew or decided that I needed to be fit and healthy and active to be able to push my chair and lead in into dependent life they basically told me they didn't want me living at home forever um because apparently I was quite annoying who could imagine that um moving on um and um it kind of went from there so I played loads of sports you know I swam play tennis basketball and then started wheelchair racing and and really for me when I started wheelchair racing I just I just knew that that was it that was what I I wanted to do and and that feeling you got you know when you found I I felt the same I I I jumped around a few Sports over the years and when I found when I found Athletics and and that feeling like can you describe something what that feel was like when you you almost you almost found your home don't you can you tell tell me about that moment yeah it was um you know I I looked at will cheres from the outside and I thought it was a bit boring to be honest and then I tried it and my first race I remember just thinking wow this is amazing and you know I hadn't done any athletic so didn't really know anything about it and then he was like I want to do it again and it it just there was something disconnected to me that I thought it was a really cool sport but also you know I wasn't brilliant at it when I first started doing it but you know something that was quite important for me you know when I was 12 I I saw the London marathon on TV and I saw wheelchair athletes in proper racing chairs doing it and um then you know Chris halam was from CBR was from kran you know he he was on and you know he was loud and rude and terrible tast in leopard print bodysuits and he became one of my best mates in sport you know but he was really out there and I'd only ever seen disabled people being quite passive and you know on TV you know there wasn't much disability representation and here was Chris you know challenging it all and if somebody was patronizing to him he would have told them exactly what to go do themselves and I was like Wow and so there was a couple of things happened at the same time that that just drew me in and you know I I I wanted to just do wheelchair racing but my dad was like no you can't you've got to do multisports you can't just you got to wait till he 16 17 before you concentrate and it's like okay right that's fine and um actually that was really good I I think i' I'd say that to to any young person you know now yeah there's a lot of pressure to be to do one sport if you're talented but just try to keep it it it broader because that's that's really useful I especially because you don't you know I always say to youngsters you got to love your sport because you might not always like it you know especially when times are tough and training is really hard so you know having a little bit where you you still do other things if you get to 16 17 decide that is not the sport for me you've you've got other options which I think are are really important to have you mentioned Chris halam there and no I as I I think back to you know your C Chris John Harris you know Anthony Hughes all these Legends of of of power of sport you know who going through you know you know 12 onwards who who was your inspiration and you know how how important is it to have have these role models and have these you know have disabled people represented you know on on a bigger scale so people can relate I guess yeah I mean it it was absolutely Chris and and John that were a huge part of my life so John from when I was pretty young was was really helpful really supportive very kind to me I remember going to race at a multisport event in St Athens and and John spending time with me you know teaching me how to push a chair Kristen speak to me for a few years probably wasn't cool enough uh and and then he became one of my best friends in sport you know so you know Chris probably didn't want some horrible little kid you know s of of asking him a million questions he was actually really kind incredible person actually he had this sort of outward persona but both of them were were huge because you know John although he was a field ventor I'd seen him on TV doing London Marathon um and you know they they were it because you know between the two of them they broke down so many barriers that um you know made it easier for me to come come behind there's also someone else in in Welsh sport who's changed probably thousands of people's lives that's a woman called an Ellis and administrator she played hockey for GB um and she basically you know got me to s on the board of sport Wales in my 20s so I learned about being on a board and reading papers and finances and all this stuff and you know she again you know back then you wouldn't have had a young person sitting on a board and she was like no no you're going to do it and no nobody really argues with her she's an amazing woman like Feist and cares so much about Welsh Sport and so you know she was a real role model in terms of administration um just um you know someone that I looked up to and in my final Commonwealth Games which was in Melbourne in 2006 I was team captain and she was the chef to Mission you know basically in charge of the team she was Fab she was just um we we used to call her um okay I have to say this is from a place of Love okay so our our nickname at the game store was Frodo and I don't know what but we where we were living in the village there was some boxers from another country that would get up at 5 o'clock in the morning and be skipping and training outside on the road outside our block of houses and she'd um she'd come out one morning in a dressing gown and had stomped down the road um she's not very tall and stomped down the road and basically told these massive boxers to go back to bed and to stop waking up and she was like stop waking up my athlete and we just like oh we just I mean just love I mean she just cares uh you know and and so yeah we just um she she was someone I really looked up to no you as team captain as as her Chef is what a what a team that that was which that was Melbourne that that was a lot of fun yeah and um all sorts of really you know fun stories about I was uh at the boxing uh one day and so once I finished competing I tried to get um to as many different events as I I could and um you know you're there uh you know kind of supporting and cheering and you know having having that when when you're competing at the end of the games it's it's really uh a bit miserable uh to to be honest and um I'd ended up uh at at uh one of the uh sorry the boxing the Welsh guy didn't have um uh the right color shirt so being being team captain uh and I was wearing the right color shirt I basically stripped I was wearing stuff underneath I basically stripped off and handed in my shirt uh I think he probably struggled to fit into it but it's basically yeah you know this is what your team captain has to do that's what happened to me you know if if one of my my guys needs a shirt he can have my shirt did he win no but you know no the lucky the lucky shirt you never would have got that back yes I'm not sure what happened to it to be perfectly honest I don't think I did get it back com games is is a great convo because you know it's it's the only integrated event isn't it between the Olympic side and the par Olympic side um how how did you find that as a as an integrated you know major event so my first come withth games Oakland you know we weren't allowed to stay in the accomodation we weren't allowed kit it was very much you know you know you weren't part of it we didn't have the same medals um and then Manchester really pushed it forward but also for quite a long time we had demonstration races at the Olympics so from 84 in La there was a demonstration women's 800 and men's 1500 uh and World Athletics over the years um I I also raced at I raced at four Olympics I raced at a number of um non-disabled world championships um and Europeans and there was a program where there was greater integration so uh at the world championships in in deu in Korea that there was um a a really decent you know program of of disabled athletes across various impairment groups competing and then you know politics and Sport always you know fairly closely intertwined um decision was was taken that um the IPC felt having a demonstration race at the Olympics would be taken away from the Paralympics um and that doing the same at mainstream World Championships would take away from IPC world so so that was stopped so I do think it's a shame because I think there could have been um you know I think there were big Sports you know like Athletics women can do integrated events I think they really could um and you know you've always got to be really careful about you know not just cherry-picking the events and not just you know picking minimal disability events and those with high level of impairments get chucked out I mean that's you know that's really awful but I I I think Commonwealth Games sets a really high bar I think it's really positive I think for smaller countries where they they struggled to have inclusive sport for disabled people you know maybe some of the island nation um you know uh that that does a lot to change disability rights at the same time as it's inclusive for sport so you know for small countries like tuvalu it really raises the profile of disabled athletes um and it's it's it's it's it's great here you know because when you see you know Livy Breen winning a gold medal and you know it's on the medal table and the whole Welsh nation's behind her that's great but it's probably some stuff we take a little bit for granted in the UK because we've always for quite long time our inclusions right it could always be better so um no I think the Commonwealth Games is brilliant we we've got to do everything we can to to protect and and and nurture that because it's really important for Welsh athletes we'll talk about London 2012 separately in a little bit but how have you seen the par Olympic Games change and develop and and you know the international par Olympic Committee over the years to to to what it is now yeah it's changed I mean the public perception of Paralympics has changed um I think there's um a lot more you know knowledge and understanding in the paralympic movement you know I worked on 2012 and um I remember in 2010 so I retired right at the start of 20 2007 and in I think 2010 they did the organizing committee did some research which was name a par Olympian and it was quite cool because my name came out top and recognition of me was like really high and there wasn't really um very many other athletes that the public could name they could sort of name a sport or vaguely have it but it was my full name I remember somebody saying to me oh this is like really cool went yeah it's really like cool for my ego but no one is going to buy a ticket for 2012 to come and sit and watch me commentate on a race and so we have to you know radically change what we do because we've got to get the names of a ton of paralympians out there in the media so people come and because you need to connect to it you know and you you want people to buy a ticket to come watch um someone they care about competing so that was really good so you know by the time 2012 came around there was was you know a lot of names that were known um and so yeah there's been you know the the coverage really increased from from 92 and each fouryear cycle there was more and more coverage and so 2012 you know was landmark in terms of because it was it was all over the media but I think sometimes probably a bit young but you know in in 2000 in Sydney there were live there were programs on every night on the BBC and um you know every cycle there's been more and more coverage um and you know it's been shown in more jurisdictions around the world you know it's now in the USA and I think 180 countries or jurisdictions have signed up to cover some part of the games for Paris which is amazing it's it's a a bit of an increase on Tokyo but you know it's still going absolutely in the the right direction where I'm a little bit more worried is that um there's a bit more what we call inspiration porn out there than there was before um and and this is a phrase that was uh developed to say about how disabled people are treated about who we're all Brave and marvelous and you know you know I get people come to go oh you're so brave like well what come out uh you know because I'm a politician and and Inspiration Point is a really tricky saying because in sport there are really definitely amazing inspirational moments that you go wow okay I've seen that that's what you you see it in other fields as well but just assuming that every disabled athlete is inspirational I think is a is is a bit of a a challenge so in a different context I was with a mate who's Will CH user um we were together and somebody came up to her and said you are so inspirational and she's said what because I'm an accountant you know and it's it's getting people to think about their perception of disability and disabled people the prejudices they attach to us um you know you wouldn't go to an undisabled accountant and go oh you're so inspirational you might say you're a brilliant accountant but you wouldn't call him inspirational apologies to any accountants out there so so I think there's still some more stuff that we need to do to to separate um amazing sporting moments and every disabled person being insiration because when you start talking in those terms it actually is very much based on oh I couldn't I didn't believe you could actually do that I didn't believe you could actually have a job I don't believe you could actually get on the tube and and that's where we are sort of behind the times in terms of how we treat disabled people to me Paralympics is first and foremost an amazing sporting event where people win and lose and it does have a secondary message but it's not the Paro Olympic games' responsibility to change the whole of society that's Parliament that's government that's EMP you know that's society itself needing and wanting to change how is it know being on the field of play no being on the track and to then being I guess the other side and working on London 2012 as as you did and then you know how did it feel like when you saw how much of a success it was you know watching Johnny peacock shush 80,000 thousand people in the Olympic Stadium now how was that for you know sitting on the other side so so when I retired I was so completely done with with competing um the transition out was was a really positive one for me but also I've been planning it from the age of 21 and I retired to 36 so um to to still be involved to be sitting you know on on the Finish Line commentating is really cool and people say do you miss it oh no it's my my life has changed and evolved but um you know for for that sort of Thursday uh with Johnny peacock amazing so I was sitting on the Finish Line with Mike Castello from the BBC we were commentating and there had been false starts and then there was drama and you know Oscar Pastorius was kind of expected to win and Johnny peacock earlier in the year had broken the world record but at a much smaller event and Johnny was going to start fast but would would Oscar catch him it was all that kind of you know huge huge drama and then you a couple of false starts and um and tou and then Johnny just you know and Mike Costello will say this he's commentated on so many events he has never seen anything like it where Johnny just held his fingers to his lips he's on the screens and just went sh and I get gooseb 880,000 people stopped talking I mean and stopped shuffling in the seats that is the moment where Johnny yeah the people support him because he's British and you know Athletics is a very friendly crowd generally but he had 880,000 people in his hand and when I look back at he thinking that's the moment he realized he could win it was one of my um favorite races of of 2012 uh and no not just race it but my favorite moment because it was everything leading up to it it was the emotion and and and him winning it was absolutely stunning AB completely amazing Victory and and 20 2012 there were lots of just amazing moments um you know everywhere and I remember um for um the Olympics and i' but before the the 2012 Olympics somebody had asked me um there was a lot of debate about whether the par Olympics should be first or not and uh and I just I know they they're the warmup guys for us and um that's sort of and I'm quite a few people said it but that's that's been used in later campaigning um it was used in 2012 which was you know uh the one of the strapl lines for the Olympics was take the stage and at the end it was hasht stage taken and then the adverts going into the Paralympics were thanks for the warm up guys uh and you know there's there's moments like that that you just go yeah you know and and I remember you know we we didn't know how many people would come and watch the Paralympics so we knew lots of tickets had been sold and there were sort of r for the park where you could go into multiple events and you don't you know people are still going to make the effort to get out of bed and leave the house and get on the you know transport to get there I remember going in on the first morning uh of of the competition which is always hate and it's not you know it's not the most exciting you know it's 10 o'clock in the morning and you know I'm sure people are thinking oh do we make the effort I remember going into the stadium and it was packed and it's like you know you go okay it's packed for heat this is good because don't forget I mean no no Olympics had had kind of sold the tickets that had been sold for Lon for the Olympics and certainly not for the par Olympics um so that that was an amazing moment in time T you mentioned it earlier about transitioning out of sport you he was 2007 you said that you you retired you know I think you said you were you were ready ready to to to leave but like you know how was that cuz know I always find transition out of sports you hope it goes one way where it's it's through choice now I guess you never want to leave sport through I guess not your own choice whether that's injury or or something like that but how was it for you and you know what what advice would you give to those who are maybe going through that transition period or thinking about transition out of sports now I know you you prepared well for what you were going to do Post career but yeah what what advice would you give um so I think it's always tempting to just do your sport and nothing else and especially if you're good at it it's really tempting and so um for me I I did my degree um I then was involved in lots of different things to build up my CV because um you know being a successful athlete doesn't you know you you may your name may be known to people but you need to prove your skills you know it's a long time in the past that just because you're successful athlete you'd be given a job that you didn't have to be very good at and I'm not sure that was ever you know necessarily really the the case either although that's what people you know might like to assume so you know for me it's um do other things read books read the papers know what's going on in the world you know when you go to countries you know find out about their history and their culture and I remember so you know my first games were so in ATA my dad made me go to the library to get books out on on South Korea and understand because there were huge American riots there was a lot of political unrest in Korea and you know made me go and understand what was happening in in the country that I I was going into so you know keep learning because also the other thing if you get successful you get invited to dinners you know you need to talk about other stuff you can't just talk about what you did on the track two days ago cuz it's a little bit boring unless you're also an athlete um you know and so you know and so I I think for me I always planned for me not being the one to decide when I retired because the reality is it's someone else who just you get injured you get broken you know or your team manager decides you're not qu quick enough so um you know that's that's kind of quite you know you you've got to be mindful of that all the time and then I was in a really lucky position that I was the one that chose chose when to stop and and I really kind of managed you know who I told when I told uh how I I kind of decided to do it I you know was was was down to me and that that's important because I think sometimes that's the moment it can be out of control I'm a bit of a control freak I have to say so um yeah it's Ju Just keep doing other things um because you you need to build a TV and you know there is no paralympian I kind of hoped it would be I knew it was never going to happen in my career I kind of hoped it would have been happen by now but there is no paralympian I think that's ever made enough money not to have to work again you know so you know there is not srlions of pounds in in disability sport so you know you you need to keep earning money when and you also need something to do you know I I remember uh I competed at the Sydney Olympics the same night Kathy won a gold medal amazing 110,000 people stunning nothing will be the same as that ever again in my life but also I don't want it to be so you know you're a longtime retired so you know that's why I think you've got to you've got to think about all all these things and you know my dad uh you know would at the end of every year and end of every season my dad had say to me right you've spent every penny that you've made or earned this year you know that's a pension that you still don't have and what you going to do when you grow up so I might have been 30 when he was telling me this but that was kind of useful every year go do I still want to do it am I still get you know and and so you know um sport doesn't oh this sounds really miserable thing to say but sport doesn't ow you were living um you you've got to kind of create it so you know you know just just make the most of the opportunity but but take control about what you do um outside sport a great point there about even for myself no thinking talking and doing Athletics 24/7 it's just not healthy is it is is having another Avenue to think about something else is is know benefits me as a performer as well let alone anything else but I think is having something else is crucial in my kind of development itself yeah and you you can't you can't spot you can't train 20 hours a day um you know if you're injured or stuff's not going the way you want it to you need balance in your life and um the other thing I think is important as an athlete is that you know it does encompass your life and it's very easy to only think of yourself as an athlet um did you ever do ven diagrams in school those funny little circles that used to interact and cut over each other and so I I like to think of myself as a diagram where you know I I was an athlete I'm a parliamentarian I'm a mom I'm a wife I'm Welsh uh I'm a love reading books I'm really untidy you know all those things make me the who I am and I think it's really important for athletes that they see themselves as a combination even though the athlete bit might be the most well-known thing about them and the thing that they're really serious about it's really important to think about yourself in other context because it helps you when you you know you your career moves to something else that's it's really really good points I I love that diagram as well I think everyone should do that generally just to you know understand yourself better it's great and my final question Tanny is you know what advice would you give to those who maybe just starting their sporting Journey you know whether they're young old not to Old you know anyone who might be just starting their Journey that what advice would you give them uh find something you love doing because you don't always like it it's really annoying infuriating it'll provide you with the biggest frustrations you'll ever experienc in life it will help you build your resilience it really will but you know you can also get so much out of it what whatever level you you take part in you know being being physically active and healthy and playing sport is brilliant and it's worth it you know just but you know find something that you love uh and you know you you will have to be persistent but it's it's a price that's that's worth paying absolutely Tanny thank you so much I really really love speaking to you and know it's a priv privilege to have you on the show so thank you so much for joining us today [Music] [Applause]