An important part of sport’s appeal is the fascination we take in watching the breathtaking and incredible feats that the human body can undertake in order to achieve. Those moments that capture our imagination and leave us speechless are those that we didn’t even know were possible. The Paralympics of 2012 in particular reminded us of this. But even in this group of athletes, the story of David Smith stands out as truly inspirational. The gold medallist in the rowing mixed coxed four has lived a life and career that in itself seems unbelievable.
Smith was born with a condition known as congenital talipes equinovarus, commonly known as ‘club foot’, in both of his feet. This significantly hampered his development. “I had to learn to walk in special plaster cast boots until the age of three. It left my right foot slightly deformed and fused. That had caused lots of problems as a kid playing sport as all my attention was always going to that.” However, determined not to let this hold him back, Smith overcame his issues to represent Great Britain at karate at the tender age of 15, and also competed in both Skiing and Athletics at a regional level. In each, he was competing in regular competition against able-bodied individuals.
Even relatively recently, Smith’s focus was not on rowing; he put all his efforts into bobsleighing, reaching the top four in the UK for his position as brakeman, and strived to become one of the best in the world. His regret at not quite making the grade is still evident. “Rowing came later in life for me. I was on the bobsleigh team in the Olympic squad and missed out on the 2006 Winter Olympics by a couple of hundredths of a second, but was having all sorts of injury problems that held me back from competing regularly on the world stage.”
It was these injuries that would prevent him from competing further in the sport. “I was going to a physio at the time, who said to me, ‘You’re not going to be able to compete at this level in bobsleigh. You are never going to be able to compete in sport again. Your body is just shutting down.’ That was a pretty heartbreaking moment, because that was 2008, so I wasn’t ready to give up mentally or physically, I still wanted to compete.”
After this disappointment, Smith was still not ready to give up on his dreams as a sportsman. “My whole life I’ve always wanted to be an athlete, but I’ve been held back with the tumour, held back with my foot. I’d come so close on so many occasions, in karate, in athletics, in skiing, in bobsleigh. I just never felt I got to really fulfil my potential as I thought I could, without all of these things holding me back.” Smith felt he had more to get out of sport.
With this burning desire still evident, Smith took a different avenue for his sporting endeavours. “On advice by my physio, a classifier for the BPA [British Paralympic Association], I went to the talent ID day just see what it was all about. I love sport, I love competing, and to compete in a home games was going to be something else.” It was obvious to the selectors that Smith had serious potential in rowing. “I jumped on an erg for the first time in my life, and did a 1000m row. I came pretty close to breaking three minutes, and was told that was a pretty respectable time for someone who has never done any endurance training. British Rowing got in touch with me and asked me to come down to another day in Aversham, and then I made it onto the Paralympic squad.”
But another catastrophic setback occurred in May 2010 that threatened once more to end his sporting life. “I was sent for a routine MRI scan by the BPA. It came back with the result that there was a tumour the size of a tennis ball growing inside my spinal cord at my neck.”
In an attempt to save his sporting career – and more importantly his life – Smith sought help within the rowing community in Oxford. “This is when the real Oxford connection comes in, as it was an ex-Oxford rower that did my surgery. I went up to Richard Budget who is the British Olympic doctor and an ex-Olympic rower himself. He rang Tom Cadoux-Hudson, who’s a surgeon in Oxford and also lectures at Oxford University.”
The surgery was far from straightforward, with near-fatal implications in itself. “The confusion with the surgery is that because the tumour had been there so long, when he took that out there was a massive rush of blood to the spinal cord. That tumour had been pressing on my neck for so long it had damaged my entire nervous system throughout my body. So when they took it out I ended up with a massive blood clot in my neck. I woke up completely paralysed from the neck down. And that involved another emergency surgery on the neck.”
For someone so active and for whom sport is such a great part of his life, this was a staggeringly quick life change that was hard to take. “I went from being an Olympic bobsleigher to basically being in a wheelchair. I spent a month in hospital, I lost three stone in weight, I couldn’t even stand up, and had to completely learn to walk again. It’s all such a blur to me.” His phenomenal recovery, culminating in winning a Paralympic Gold seems impossible to Smith himself. “I forget now that I’ve been through all the surgery. I look back and think ‘God I’m not sure I could do that again.’ My mind almost blocked out my knowledge of my body. I have one goal, one target.”
Smith’s immense drive was shown in his entire dedication and focus on returning to rowing, instead of on survival. “Every day, seven days a week, I couldn’t row, I couldn’t train. So I would lie in bed and visualise training sessions. I think the mind is such a powerful machine, if I visualise then my body will respond, on a hormonal level if not on a physical level. I decided to do as much as possible, and I think that played a key role [for my recovery].”
Even once he was able to walk again, getting back into rowing was no mean feat. “Rowing, even when you are fully fit, is probably one of the hardest sports in the world. Before we were doing 16km ergs, and now I couldn’t even do five minutes.” And it was far from just the physical pain that he was experiencing. “I just kept pushing myself and going through that mental and emotional pain of looking in the mirror.” Smith needed to rebuild himself in every sense of the word.
Fast forward 14 short months since the operation, and incredibly Smith was standing on the podium at the World Championships with a gold medal around his neck. With no time to celebrate, training moved on as the Olympics loomed large. And by the time London came, Smith felt as if nothing was going to get in his way. “I think I’d been through so much, by the time I got to the starting line in London, nothing mattered, I was just so focused on crossing that line in first place. It was a massive team effort to get me there, it was not just the guys in the boat but everyone at GB Rowing.”
“I thought to myself: ‘I’ve put my body in so much pain in the last two years to make London, there is no way I want to leave with anything but gold. Everyone around the world who is going [to the Paralympics] is going to be hurting, but if I could hurt myself a little bit more, just push a little bit harder, that is going to make all the difference.’ As a team we went there to win, but on a personal note, it would close the door on the nineteen years of problems in sport.”
The mixed coxed four of Smith, Pam Relph, Naomi Riches, James Roe, and cox Lily van den Broecke, won gold for GB in the final race of the London 2012 Games at Eton Dorney. The coxed four overhauled Germany (who had set a new World Best Time in the qualifiers) in the second half of the race in dramatic fashion to win by just 2.06 seconds.
Like many of the Olympians, the realisation of what had been achieved is still a little lost on Smith. “Even now I come home and think ‘God did that all really happen.’ It still feels like it’s a bit of a dream and someone’s going to pinch you and say, ‘it’s race day again, we’ve got to go.’ It feels like the past six months haven’t happened.”
However, the race would prove to be a final flourish in a short rowing career for Smith. “It was my health that made me give up the sport; I would have loved to have stayed as a rower. But the damage to my arm from surgery and my neck problems – the strain that rowing was putting on my body was just too much.”
Not content with his Paralympic Gold, Smith hunted for the next challenge to quench his endless ambition. Cycling around the world in 2013 became the next mammoth task that he decided to take on. “This cycle thing started to grow on me and I thought I needed a challenge that didn’t involve competitive sport, but still pushed the mind and the body.” But Smith hasn’t given up on competitive sport just yet: “I’ve got dreams to go to Rio as well, and I would love this dream to come true. But my body took a real beating crossing that line in London and I’m still recovering.”
It is clear that whatever the future holds, sport will continue to be at the heart of Smith’s life: “I’ve said before that sport saved my life, and I truly believe that. I always see life as a row of hurdles. And if you look down a row of hurdles on an athletics track most people would perceive it as a threat, and think I’ll never be able to jump these. But if you ask a top Olympic hurdler, they’ll perceive it as challenge. I think there is a lot in the psychology of that. I had such a passion to achieve in sport that all the hurdles that were put in front of me I saw as challenges, and I’ll never give up.”
There must be very few other stories that can match the inspiration of Smith’s struggle to constantly pick himself up from serious setbacks to compete at the highest level for his country, across a multitude of disciplines. There is a satisfying closure brought by his gold medal in London, a vindication for this fighting spirit; but it is testament to his character that he has quickly set even more difficult goals in the hope of challenging himself. David Smith is a man who never wants to live in his comfort zone.
