On winning his gold medal in the T42 200m, one of the most memorable races of the Games.
How are you?
Good, I’m doing a photo shoot with Powerade, so it’s great to come and show my medal to these guys, as they have obviously supported me. And it brings to a close my Paralympic experience and hopefully opens up a new chapter in the Richard Whitehead story.
I hope to use this success in as many positive ways as possible and to engage as many people within the perameters that I can do. I’m in a great position because so many people have seen my race and I keep getting massive support whether it’s social networking sites and obviously with my youtube clip which, I think has had 600,000 hits, its brilliant!
You’re a marathon runner – did you just decide to take up sprinting to get into the Paralympics?
I started marathon running in 2004 and that’s how I got into running and that showed, I realised especially with my visible impairment, that running is such a great tool to be able to get out there. One, I want to challenge myself as a person, as an athlete, because I took on such a massive task of running a marathon, but also the power of sport, it can outreach to so many different people. When I ran the New York marathon in 2004 I finished and said I would never run another marathon because it was such a hard task – just like lots of other first time marathon runners. But the messages of support that I got from just people who had seen me on the streets of New York outweighed the pain of doing it. I had raised £8000 for MacMillan Cancer Relief at that point because I felt that sport is not just about the success of winning those medals, but it’s about what you can give back to society and for me it was , hopefully being seen as a role model in sport but also supporting my local community and charitable organisations. And one of my friends at the time, Simon Mellows, had a sarcoma and unfortunately he was suffering from that and the kind of strength that he showed, showed me that sports not just about winning but it’s about trying to create a platform. It was a really important moment in my life because I’m sure I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you about my gold medal success if it wasn’t for me running marathons. It started my path.
And the mental strength I have over the 200m is because of my marathons, I’m a strong athlete, I’m mentally and physically strong, I’ve done 24 marathons and a 2:42 and I’ve come a long way in such a short amount of time.
Taking up sprinting is a very different story…
Very different, but I still have the same people around as I have had since I started marathon running so I still have my S+C coach, Tim Stevenson, and my coach involved but I have put in place a sprint specific coach, Keith Anton, whose basically brought the skill acquisition of sprinting to me so I am able to continue my progress. Its important to me to have a dynamic team around me that support whatever challenges I want to do. And if I change sports I’m sure I’ll have some kind of contact with the coaching network I’ve got now but I’m clearly wanting to take my 200m and run into the next level.
I think I’m the only athlete in the British athletics team that holds every title and record – British, European, World records as well as the British, European and World titles.
Doesn’t get much better that!
That’s right and that’s why it’s important to keep goal setting, keep assessing, keep realising that even though I’m at this stage now, there are other mountains to be conquered and I’ve got an exciting couple of months and years taking on new challenges.
Did you go in confident to that race, thinking you had this in the bag?
I never go into a race thinking that I’m going to be successful, I don’t take things for granted. For me its about working and training as a gold medallist, so every time I go on the track I train as though I’m gong to win that gold medal, as though I deserve to be a gold medallist and that reflects on how I perform. I think its important to be that way inclined because it’s like going to work in a 9-5 job, if you want to be successful within that environment you have to really apply yourself to the trade and I do that all the time. I had raced most of the guys before and had beat them on home soil at the test event or World Cup, but being the current World Record holder before the Paralympics didn’t really mean anything because I still realised that I really needed to push on to be the Paralympic Champion – it’s a completely different kettle of fish and for me every performance before 1st September was irrelevant. I just had to deliver the perfect race on that day and I did!
You have a slow start and you can hear in the commentators voice that he doesn’t think you’re even in the race?
That’s right and the crowd didn’t either. For me – my story is about changing people opinions and perceptions in sport and that race really summed up who I am, that I worked so hard to get in a position for success and probably 99% of people who hadn’t seen me before probably thought I would lose that race, but the 1% of people who had seen me before knew that I’m a strong guy and know my game plan.
Did the crowd help?
I felt that crowd from the start gun all the way through and the different changes in emotions – the start was quite loud and then there was a bit of a lull because they thought at that stage I was nowhere near winning the race, and then as soon as they knew that I was in contention it was unbelievable, the crowd was so loud, I can’t explain how emotionally lifting that can be, when you have got 80,000 people supporting you and screaming for you.
How did it feel when you crossed the line?
On one end of the scale relief, because you have delivered what you said you would, you’ve told people that you get that one chance and you’re going to take it with both hands. And for me, I knew I was a good athlete but I think I have proved to myself that that’s justified with that one 24.38second race. My sporting career came down to that one event and that makes or breaks you, but that’s the great traits of a champion, that when the pressure is on you can still deliver. I enjoy those kind of scenarios and circumstances, I enjoy being put in those pressure cooker environments but you need to be confident, I work a lot on confidence with the team around me and on past performances – the team around me have a lot to do with that.
The team seems really close this year?
Yeah that’s right and every athlete needs to take responsibility for their performance, so when you don’t do so well you need to evaluate and make changes and put things in place. I hear quite a lot about athletes moaning about the reasons they have not done too well, which is not the way to handle yourself as a professional athlete – we are professional and sometimes its about saying ‘today I wasn’t good enough’. I have people around me that I have personally put in place that I trust professionally as well as personally, to do the best for me and that’s why I think I have been successful, whether on the marathons or on the track. I care about the people who are in my team and we have made that connection and if you haven’t got that when the chips are down it’s a lonely place. Athletics can be really tough mentally and physically because when you get onto the track the only person that crosses that line is you, but if you have had a team around you that can take away all the variables that can distract you or take away from your performance, it makes it so much easier. I was talking to my S+C coach, my parents and my fiancée and other people in the stadium and they were saying they were a nervous wreck when I got to the start line, for me that was easy I just had to run 200m.
I’m not sure I would be able to watch me race, because of the way I run, I put so much G-force into my hips and my core coming round that bend that its hard to control so it is tough.
You choose not use prosthetics with knee joints, does it put a lot of pressure on your hips?
As an athlete that needs stability and confidence with their running, I find that the knees are hard to control, I always run with a straight leg and as long as I keep as straight as possible I don’t get any back pain, there’s no issues regarding injury and I can justify the reason why I run. People do ask that and since 2004 I have run thousands of miles and never had an issue, so the way I run is justified.
Lots of athletes have questioned my prosthetics and now I see quite a few athletes running with them so I think you might see another surge in movement like with Oscar running with the two below knee cheetah blades, I think you’ll probably see the same in my event.
How has the Paralympic experience been for you at home?
Obviously the home advantage has been talked about quite a lot and Paralympics GB have really made the environment for us to succeed as athlete friendly as possible, whether it’s the physios, the doctors, the training facilities. We went to Monte Gordo and trained out there and the whole experience for me, I would say has been a reflection on me as a person, it’s been professional, I had a job to do and I’ve done that and that’s important. I’m the kind of person that wants to inspire people in sport and feel the need to deliver the performance to the people who have supported me, as well as justification for the kind of time people have given me as a person. It’s not stopped there, this is a platform now for success, I want to go to Rio and I want to be successful there, but also not to just stick with the Rio experience because sport doesn’t just happen every 4 years for Paralympic and Olympic athletes, its about trying to get more out of it and hopefully I can get in the local community and nationally as well as internationally. I’ve got lots of other challenges on the horizon – hopefully running Lands End to John O’Groats, running a marathon everyday – to complete that challenge is something on my horizon, I’m hoping to do that next year at some point, so that will be another crazy challenge!
Everyone is saying these Games have changed the perception of disability. Do you think it’s going to stick?
That’s a great, great question. I think – this is what I have said to everyone who has spoken about the legacy and the sustained impact of Paralympic sport – it’s now for, one, the athletes to take responsibility regarding that because they can take the Paralympic values and the Paralympic experience back to their local communities all over GB and Northern Ireland to spread the message to the people that they have grown up with. That’s what I feel has made the Games – that we are accessible on face value to the general public, they embrace that, it’s great having the media on the TV and on the papers but the general public respond to face time. But also the NGB’s (National Governing Bodies) really looking at if we can get more events now like the Paralympics in the programme – maybe something like a diamond league series or something like that and really push that forward for the next 2-3 years.
It’s raised the profile of the athletes as well as the sports. I think people see the Paralympics as very marketable now and hopefully I can help do that.
