Tanni Grey-Thompson: Seven things we learned when she spoke to Kirsty Young
In her 91热爆 Radio 4 podcast Young Again, journalist and broadcaster Kirsty Young asks fascinating people what advice they would like to give their younger self.
Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson is a crossbench peer, activist, and former athlete. As a wheelchair racer, she won 11 Paralympic gold medals, six London marathon titles, and has held 30 world records. She retired from athletics in 2007 and was made a life peer in 2010. In her time in the House of Lords, she has campaigned for rights for people with disabilities.
In a wide-ranging conversation, Tanni tells Kirsty about her fight for an education, the weird place she keeps her gold medals, and the similarities between athletes and mass murderers. Here are seven things we learned.
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1. She keeps her medals in a rucksack behind the washing machine
Tanni is one of Great Britain’s most successful Paralympians, with 16 golds, plus five other medals, all won in wheelchair racing. Others may love talking about her achievements, but Tanni is not one for looking back.
If you came to my house, there鈥檚 nothing that would suggest I鈥檇 ever been an athlete.
“I’m very forward-looking,” she says, “So it is slightly strange that the only time I ever think about my sports career is when I’m talking to someone else about it. I don’t wake up every morning and look at my medals. If you came to my house, there’s nothing that would suggest I’d ever been an athlete.”
She’s so relaxed about her achievements that she doesn’t even keep her medals anywhere special: “They’re in a rucksack, usually kept behind the washing machine.”
2. If she’d been born two years earlier, she may not have lived
Tanni was born in 1969 and has spina bifida, a condition that affects the spine. “The doctors said to my parents that if I’d been born a couple of years earlier, I’d have been taken away, not fed and allowed to die,” she says. “Looking back, they were probably testing my parents to see if that’s maybe what they wanted to do with me.”
She says her parents always supported and loved her, although other people were less respectful. “I was, I think, five when someone in the street asked me why my parents hadn’t terminated the pregnancy,” she says. “[I remember] Mum sitting me down and talking to me about it, and she was really open. She said that if she’d known before I was born that I was going to have spina bifida, she probably would have terminated the pregnancy. People get really upset by that, and I absolutely don’t. She never said, ‘We wish we hadn’t [had you]…' Having a disabled child wasn’t easy, but they made it look easy.”
3. She had to fight for a full education
As a disabled child in the 1970s, Tanni was not expected to go to the same schools as able-bodied children. “I could walk a little bit when I was young, so I started primary school,” she says. As she grew, her spine “collapsed” and she began using a wheelchair. Because of that, she was not immediately accepted to the same school as her older sister, Sian.
“The head teacher wrote to my parents and said, ‘We don’t take people like Tanni.’ That was a big wake-up call,” she says. She was sent to see what was referred to as “the special school”. “My dad asked about what subjects I could do… They very proudly said, ‘She might be able to do four CSE’s [the forerunner to GCSE’s]… My dad said, ‘You’re not going there. There’s no way you’re going to that school.”
Her parents threatened to sue the Secretary Of State for Wales, where they lived, if she wasn’t allowed to go to a mainstream school. They won. “This is where I get it from. My mum and dad were up for the fight.”
4. She used to throw up before every race
At the age of 15, Tanni began competing in athletics competitions. She quickly became very successful, although she describes her Paralympic career as “20 minutes on the track”.
“I love competing. It’s you against everybody else,” she says. “It takes a certain amount of ego to be on the start line.” But her ego never let her overcome the nerves. “I used to throw up before every race.” In fact, the feeling of nausea is one of the things she misses. “I loved trying to push myself as much as I physically could. The only bit I really miss about training is when you’d do a session where you get so close to the edge [you think] you’re going to throw up.”
5. Elite athletes and mass murderers have a lot in common
“There is something slightly macabre, I think, about putting yourself in that position,” Tanni says of becoming a professional athlete. “There’s a psychiatrist, [Professor] Steve Peters, who works with elite athletes and mass-murderers. He says there’s a lot of similarity. You have to have a level of narcissism…But actually you can’t have too much ego, because that makes you complacent. It’s a really fine line, in terms of what you’re trying to do.”
There鈥檚 a psychiatrist, [Professor] Steve Peters, who works with elite athletes and mass-murderers. He says there鈥檚 a lot of similarity.
6. People still think she’s an athlete
Although Tanni retired almost 18 years ago, not everyone seems to have noticed. “People say to me, ‘Oh you’re that athlete, aren’t you?’” she says. “It’s funny when people say it in a way where I’m not entirely sure whether they actually know I retired. Just before the Paris Paralympics [in 2024], I was at a petrol station and someone said, ‘Good luck for Paris! How’s your training going?’… Do you think I need training as a commentator?”
7. Politics isn’t so different from athletics
In the House of Lords, Tanni has fought for better disability rights. She says the world of politics has a lot in common with sport.
“It’s not as miserable as doing 30 miles when it’s –10 and raining,” she jokes. “At least you’re warm and dry. I think a lot of stuff I learned from sport [applies]. You’ve got to do the boring stuff… You’ve got to read your briefing notes and research and write a speech, because in the chamber you might have two minutes to make a difference. Which is kind of 800 metres [on the track]… They’re remarkably similar. You’ve got two minutes to show you’re good.”
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