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hadn’t run anywhere. It must be in my genes because I have exactly the same ability to recover – no matter how gruelling the race.
    After the army he became a builder and Mum worked full time for Philips, the electronics company, which was based in Croydon. She used to arrange for technicians to go out to people’s houses and fix their washing machines. She worked all the time up until her retirement. She was so determined to give all of us the best chance in life and I am so grateful for her and Dad’s support. It can’t have been easy with a son in a wheelchair trying to conquer the world.
    From the start, though, it was clear it was going to be hard going. They never accepted people telling me I couldn’t do things and that has been such a major influence on the way I perceive the world. The first time I was taken to the local play centre, the woman who ran it (she’s still there today, incidentally) refused to let me join in at first because she insisted I would endanger myself and others. My mum went nuts and told her exactly what she thought of that. She, rightly, pointed out that it was no different if I fell off a climbing frame and had to go to hospital than if an able-bodied child did the same thing. After a while the woman backed down and let me join in. I spent most of mysummers down there and in the end it was like that standoff had never happened. But it was an important lesson very early on that I was going to meet plenty of hardened attitudes and hurdles along the way in life.
    But in those days I simply didn’t feel different and in many ways I’m exactly the same now. As far as I was concerned then, I was just like any other kid. And all I wanted to do was copy my friends – run around, kick a football, ride a bike. I wasn’t going to let my disability hold me back.
    To make sure I didn’t feel left out, my parents had a special bike made for me. It was a clunky three-wheeler which I could pedal with my hands. It worked just like a normal bike except the pedals were where the handlebars were and the crank and chain ran down to the front wheel, which drove the machine forward. I remember it had a red frame with one wheel at the front and two big white wheels at the back with massive mudguards. It was so big you could probably have fitted two people on the back. Once I got that, whoosh, I was off, charging around with my mates, who all had the latest BMXs. I didn’t care, it just made me feel part of the gang.
    We would set up ramps using old sheets of wood and bricks lying around in the woods near the old airfield strip at the back of the estate. I would always be the first one to try them out. I had absolutely no fear of coming off. Mind you, most of the time I wasn’t going very fast. My trike was so heavy that my mates had to push me to get me going.Once, though, when I was about ten, we got the courage to go a bit further than usual. We constructed this really big jump at the bottom of a hill. My heart was pounding in my chest as I got ready to go for it. I look at the hill now and think it’s just a little bump but at the time it felt like a mountain.
    My friends gave me a shove to get me started.
    ‘I’ve bitten off too much here,’ I thought as my three wheels began to gather pace, heading towards this rickety-looking ramp we had built at the bottom. I slammed into the plank and took off. It felt like I was flying for ages before I crashed down to earth with a hell of a bump. I wobbled from side to side before getting my balance again, just managing to wrestle back control in time to avoid the trunk of a massive old tree. All my mates cheered.
    If I wasn’t on my bike, then I would be on my skateboard . I would just sit on it and use my hands to propel me forward. I loved it. The only problem was I used to get blisters on my hands from pushing against the hard ground – a sign of things to come.
    Football was really my dream and I didn’t want anything to stop me. We had a patch