Craig Oliver: Tanni, it's great to see you. How are you?

Tanni Grey-Thompson: I'm really good, thank you. Busy. The House of Lords is always busy.

Craig Oliver: I wanted to start by talking, and I've just finished reading your books and they were great, really enjoyed them, but start on the fact that you, you say there that you were born with spina bifida, but nobody realized you had it. When was the moment that they did realize?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: So, they didn't know when I was born because I had like, an egg shaped lump on my back. And there's different levels of spina bifida. Sometimes, it's like a lump like I had. Sometimes it can be basically an open wound. Sometimes it can be just a couple of hairs sticking, sticking out. What they didn't really know was the impact it was going to have on me.
So they didn't know if I was going to be able to walk or not. Or, what was going to happen to me. So I could walk a little bit when I was young, but basically I'm missing some bones at the back of my vertebra. So my spinal cord is exposed. So there's a couple of points on my back that if you press it, you're actually pressing very close to my spinal cord, which is not great.
So what happened is I grew, my legs were never very strong, but as I grew, my spine was on the part of my cord that was exposed, my vertebra severed my spinal cord. So I kind of always laugh when I say it. I don't know why, because it's just like, you know, there's nothing they could do. You know, it was, there wasn't any pain.
Craig Oliver: What age were you when that all happened?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: I was pretty much paralyzed by six. I think. To be honest, I don't really remember it. I remember walking badly. And I remember trying to walk with callipers and crutches and I was just miserable because I couldn't go anywhere. I just, it took me forever to do anything. So me having my, my own chair suddenly gave me this huge sense of freedom and allowed me to do things. So rather than seeing the chair as something inherently negative, for me, it was quite positive. You know, obviously lots of people have different views on what being a wheelchair user is. But there was nothing they could do at the time. The earliest they could operate was when I stopped growing, which was when I was 13.
So by then I was completely paralyzed. So, you know, I'm very much sort of, optimistic, and look forward and just deal with the hands you’re played. Can't do anything about it? Get on with it. And a lot of that came from my parents' attitude as, as well. To be honest, when I was born, I think they said to my parents, she's got spina bifida and we don't really know what it means. My parents went on okay and took me home and just got on with it.
Craig Oliver: You talk about in your book as if It was almost a blessing that you didn't have to adjust to it later in life. Like, some people will have a terrible accident and they end up in a wheelchair . But it was almost, like, part normal for you from very early on. Is that right, you prefer it that way rather than the other?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: So I think you adjust differently when you're young because, you know, you don't have the experience to, to necessarily look at the wider world. And yet a lot of this was happening when I was four, five, so, you know, as a child, you just see very much what's in front of you. I've seen people have, you know, traumatic injuries later in life.
Some accept it, you know, almost on the moment of impact and just realize their life's going to be different and get on with it. And other people, really close friends of mine, never really, learned to deal with it. So I think where I was lucky, my parents were never kind of like, woe is me, woe is them, you know, they're like, this is what it is. What are you going to do? It was a very positive environment to, to grow up in. So, so much of it depends on the people around you. So, you know, my husband broke his back when he was 21 cycling, he cycled into the back of the bus, about 30 miles an hour. Now, some of his family member just adapted and accepted straight away. Other family members really struggled with it and would talk about when he was poorly and, you know, and so it's, it's the people that you have around you that, that makes the biggest difference.
Craig Oliver: It's really interesting you talking about it in those terms because one of the big themes that comes across in talking to people in this podcast is the ability to accept. Things that just are and that you can't really do anything about but lots of people struggle with that. Is that something that you've reflected on?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Yeah, I mean, there's, there's definitely stuff that annoys me about what is around me. None of that's actually ever really to do with my impairment, because the way I look at it, I can't change it. I could spend lots of time wishing it was different, but I don't really, because there's nothing that walking would give me that I don't currently have.
So, okay, yeah, it's a pain in the neck getting in and out of my car when it's raining because it takes me a bit longer to get in and out than someone who can walk. Um, yeah, I just, I think people expect me to be frustrated about being a wheelchair user and I'm not. I'm frustrated about lots of other things, about legislation I can't change or sometimes people I have to work with, or I'm sure people are frustrated with me, but you know, those are things I can change. I can't change being paralyzed.
Craig Oliver: Was there ever a moment though where you thought this isn't fair? It doesn't sound like it there was though
Tanni Grey-Thompson: No, never. I mean, apparently my mum asked me once, you know, what did I think if I was to have spina bifida? And I was quite young and apparently what I said, well, if it wasn't me, it'd be someone else. So no, there's never been, that sort of moment where I thought if only it's probably only when I get asked about it.
So, you know, when I was an athlete, a lot of people say, do you think you would have played sport if you'd being non-disabled and it was like, well, I don't know, you know, would I have played sport if I'd been disabled but born in the north of England or Scotland or Northern Ireland. I don't know. I mean, these are just things that you can't kind of predict or spend much time figuring out to be honest.
I think I would have been sporty. Absolutely. But, you know, your environment around you has this big impact. So no, I've never sat and thought about, you know, I said getting out of the car, like, the only time you ever drop a wheel and it rolls off down the side of the car is when there is no-one else around and it's been raining and your only option is to get out of the car and sit on the floor and usually crawl through a puddle and then somebody appears, you know, there are times like that, that you're just like, really?
Craig Oliver: You say, and drop a wheel?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: So, to get my chair in the car, the wheels come off, so you put the wheels in and the frame in.
Craig Oliver: Right.
Tanni Grey-Thompson: And so you've got to be careful where you park so you don't park on a hill or you drop it and it bounces and it rolls away. It's never dry when that happens and literally when you're sitting in the puddle that's when someone walks past. So if you waited two minutes longer, you'd have found someone. But um, no, I'd rather, and I don't know if I'm always gonna feel like this, but certainly up to this point in my life, that's how I feel about it.
Craig Oliver: It's great to hear that and it's great that you do. You were sort of hinting though that sometimes there's other people around you, were there people close to you that somehow found it more difficult than you did?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Not my family. My family have always been brilliant. Probably more strangers. You know, that there was quite a lot of, it's called inspiration porn. And you can safely look on the internet for it, and it's about the way disabled people are treated, which is we're all brave and marvelous because we get out of bed in the morning.
Now, the reality is there's some disabled people who will struggle to get out of bed in the morning and struggle to work, and there's also a lot of non-disabled people that will struggle with that. And just because we have an impairment, it doesn't mean to say we're heroes. Now, that gets a bit complicated when you talk about sport, because there are kind of what are perceived to be heroic moments in sport or inspirational moments in sport.
Craig Oliver: It's almost like pigeonholing somebody and saying that I can deal with this if they're inspirational rather than I can deal with this because they're just another normal human being who goes through ups and downs and has issues just like any other person.
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Yeah, I mean, I was with a friend, a little while ago, who's a wheelchair user as well. And somebody came up to her and they recognized me as an ex-athlete. That's lovely. And then they were saying, iOh, I saw this…’And then they said to my friend, and you're inspirational as well. Because she's an accountant, you know, I'm not sure you generally call accountants inspirational.
So, it's really difficult because there's assumption that everything's moved on in the last sort of 30 years and there's some things that have, and, and some things haven't. So train access hasn't improved, inspiration porn hasn't improved, education for disabled children is still a struggle, access to sport and physical activity is still a struggle.
And as much as I loved the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, I worked on the bid and I worked on delivery and I worked 10 years on legacy. It was amazing. That has not changed the world for disabled people. And there's quite a lot of virtue signaling around where. People say, oh, 2012 changed the world because it makes them feel better. And it's almost like, well, we don't have to do anything else because we had the Paralympics in the UK. And I get really annoyed by that.
Craig Oliver: I can see and I can see that that would be really irritating. I'm just interested in why people are like that though. Is it that they're awkward and that they don't know how to engage or speak about it? What is it that makes them that they feel they have to be inspired or they have to say actually isn't it amazing that we've done all these amazing things for you?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: I think the reality is people don't know generally how hard life can be for disabled people. And for some disabled people, it's not every disabled person, I have a lot of privilege in my life because I was an athlete and I'm now a parliamentarian. I think it's because they kind of want to hope that disabled people are being treated better and some of these things are hard and difficult to fix.
You know, making trains step free is going to be expensive. It'd be a lot cheaper if they'd started it 30 years ago, so it's things like that. And there's quite recent research that shows that a lot of people don't think they've ever met a disabled person and there's some quite dark stuff as well. There's people think, ‘well, at least it's not me’. You know, and there's some really challenging things, and this is not turning a purple light on, on Big Ben, on, International Day of Disabled People and going, yeah, it's all fine. It's useful to remind people, but if things like that don't fundamentally change the way disabled people are treated, then it comes back to virtual signaling. So, it's, it's complicated stuff to fix.
Craig Oliver: The last time that I spoke to you, you were telling me a story about going to the House of Lords to vote and that you were using public transport. Just, just tell the story because it's, I think I've told it to quite a few people since…
Tanni Grey-Thompson: So I was trying to get the tube at about half seven in the morning, I was at the gate line and a member of staff said to me, ‘it's the rush hour’. You know, when I tried to, you know, be, polite and I used to sit on the board of Transport for London and they used to make us work the gate line. And it's a really difficult job. So, you know, I was trying to sort of be sympathetic and empathetic. I was like, yeah, 7.30 in the morning. And the member staff was like, ‘it's a rush hour’. So I'm like, ‘Yeah, I know because I've gotta get to work.’ And he's like, ‘You've got a job?’ Yeah. And he basically said to me, I shouldn't travel at that time, because people have got important jobs to go to.
Now, I'm, I'm not putting my job as any more important than anyone else's, but it's like, when I told him I had a job, he was really horrified. And then I said to him, I work in Westminster, and he's like, oh, what do you do? So I said, I work in the Palace of Westminster.
And he's like, oh, so did you answer the phones? And it was one of those sort of Steven Seagal moments, where it's like, on Under Siege, where he's like, I'm also a cook. Yeah, you should probably edit that out, the fact that I can quote from Under Siege. But it's like, yeah, I also answer the phones. And he's like, ‘Oh, that's lovely. But can you travel when it's more quiet?’ And when you experience that, so I'm quite resilient, you know, I think I posted on social media about it. But when, when your daily life is those microaggressions. It's really hard to deal with.
Craig Oliver: You're too modest. To say this, but he had no clue that he was dealing with one of the most successful athletes the country's ever seen. You're in the House of Lords, you're part of the legislature, you're involved in endless, amazing causes. Yet he saw you in the wheelchair and is somehow less than and that the best you could hope for is to answer the phones and why are you causing problems at rush hour? It's, it's an astonishing thing really to think about but I suppose for you actually what's really astonishing is that that probably wasn't that out of the blue in terms of how people think of you
Tanni Grey-Thompson: No, so I'm treated three very distinct ways, which is really helpful for the context. I'm treated one way as an ex-athlete, generally quite nice. One way as a parliamentarian, people love me or hate me, not much in the middle. And then the third way is as a disabled woman where, I'd say I generally experience misogyny, because it's easier to discriminate against me because I'm disabled.
Craig Oliver: Those people when they see you and they don't know that's Tanni Grey Thompson the brilliant athlete or Tanni Grey Thompson she's in the House of Lords and they see you in a wheelchair what is it? You imagine that they see they obviously assume that you must also have a mental impairment presumably as well as a physical one?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: So some people are just great and brilliant and, you know, may say do you want a hand or are you okay or just ignore me. That's fine. I mean, that's great. There's a lot of people who just feel pity for me. So when my daughter was young, You know, when I'm talking about being in third category, the number of people who came up to me and said, people like you shouldn't be allowed to have children. My response was, what Welsh people? Because I need, I need to use humor to stop me being very rude to people. I had people saying all sorts of things to me, you know, um…
Craig Oliver: It's, I mean, it must have an extraordinary degree of composure?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Yeah, so I'm quite spiky. I do have a temper. I've learned to control it over the years, I think. Not always. I did throw a pair of shoes at someone once. Um, to be fair, I was eight months pregnant and I'd had a particularly trying day and they were extremely rude to me about being pregnant. I didn't actually throw them at them, I threw them sort of in their direction, it's hard, because also, when I lose my temper, I've lost the moral argument. And what I try and do, is I try and educate, and explain, and You know, try and give them a different view. And then the other one is if I lose my temper, there's usually a lot of snot involved and tears and it's really hard dialing back from that. I've only had to do it once where, uh, I was experiencing, misogyny, really, really horrendous misogynistic treatment. And, and I lost my temper.
Craig Oliver: Of the things that picked up in your book is it's in a completely different situation but you were talking about how sometimes when you were top athlete that you were pressured to do certain things like even retire or whatever and you say that one of the lessons you learned from that which I think is actually an amazing life's left in there, which is how do we learn to respond not react? Which is just to give it a bit of time and stop and not immediately lose it in the moment. But actually I'm gonna take a breath or I'm even gonna take a night or whatever. That sounds like something that you've learned?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Yeah, I've learned because I've reacted to people and it’s not always a good thing. Never send an email at two o'clock in the morning.
Craig Oliver: Generally, a good piece of advice.
Tanni Grey-Thompson: It's really good. Always take the…if you're going to send a stroppy email, take the person's name off. So, you know, you've got time to rewrite it 17 times before you send it. Yeah, and I've learnt it through personal experience
Craig Oliver: But when you're in a situation where somebody's right in your face saying, ‘It's 7. 30 in the morning, you shouldn't be on the tube’, or, somebody's questioning whether you should have children that's different though, isn't it, it's like you're literally face to face with somebody, and every fibre of your being must be like, I really wanna let you rip on this.
Tanni Grey-Thompson: I mean, probably because it's happened so much. It's a bit like being an athlete when you're in the mix zone at the end of the race. There's not that many questions the journalist can ask you. Are you happy you won? Are you sad you lost? You just get better at dealing with those questions. For me, I feel that, you know, the, the experience I've had being a mum, you know, I'm very rarely surprised by the ableist things people say to me. Because it's happened so many times before. So, you have a better way of dealing with it. Also, you try and make an assessment in that moment, whether I'm going to change someone's opinion, or I'm going to reinforce it.
And actually, in the whole scheme of my day, is it worth my time? And the other thing is, I've got 40 things I can be doing, that can change things for the better, and I'm better off concentrating my time on that. If nothing else, it gives me lots of things to talk about on a podcast…
Craig Oliver: But it is also true that in the moment it feels like the biggest thing but as you say, when you take a breath and step back, you realize it, you know, it's, it's much smaller. You can have perspective on it.
Tanni Grey-Thompson: You know, it's not easy to deal with, but because I've got the context of my other parts of my life, that I've got the bits where I'm treated, exceptionally well and kindly and nicely, then, I think it would be very different if the only experience I had was, was all the ableism that, that comes a lot of my friends way, and then that's quite complicated because I feel a bit, guilty is not quite the right word because I can't change my life as an athlete and my life as a parliamentarian.
But I think you've got to have that, sort of emotional capacity to deal with those different things. I mean, some of it, came from my dad and my mum in different ways. You know, my mum was quite reactive. My dad was very thoughtful. A lot of what came from my parents was, be the best you can do the stuff that you care about.
My dad, from being quite young, used to tell me how much privilege I had in my life and, and I had a responsibility to try and share that with other people, you know, so some of the things my parents fought for, which was actually getting me to a mainstream school, stuff like that. My, my parents thought that I needed to give something back. And that was very much the ethos through my first coach, a guy called Roy Anthony in Bridgend. You know, if you get something out of sport, you give something back. So I was unbelievably lucky that I had really good people around me. And some of these things, you know, they're not all deeply upsetting.
Some of them are just quite funny, like not half funny, but, kind of amusing or it's useful to have that sense check to think, okay, what do we still need to work on? Because we haven't got it all sorted just yet.
Craig Oliver: I was listening to you there and hearing you talk about ableism and it made me think that we hear about racism, misogyny, transphobia, all of the things that there are lots of campaigns about and they're just prevalent and, you know, rightly so, they're, they're big, big issues. But you don't hear about ableism so much and, and actually almost so much that when you say the word, I was thinking, God, I don't hear that word very much.
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Yeah, I mean, I was one of the people when the Disability Discrimination Act came out that said actually what I wanted was an Equality Act. It was lovely that eventually we'd got some rights enshrined in legislation, but the DDA was quite low level. It was what they could get through Parliament. And then I really had high hopes of the Equality Act, but actually it just hasn't served disabled people that well.
Because what I hoped it would do, would bring ableism onto the same level as everyone else. And yes, we've got protected characteristics, and probably most people could name some of them. But disability discrimination is just not seen. So, it's a constant fight about access to goods and services, access to whether it's a hotel room or to concerts or to restaurants or education and, I was reading something on social media over the weekend where someone was basically saying, I'm allowed to be, ableist under the equality act.
Well, no, you're not, but because they could get away with being ableist, they're quite different things. So during COVID. Compulsory do not attempt resuscitation orders were put on tens of thousands of disabled people without their knowledge or permission, which basically said if they got COVID, they wouldn't be allowed to go to hospital, let alone have a chance of getting a ventilator.
Thousands of disabled people's lives were written off. So you look at the number of people who died from COVID, people with learning disabilities and disabled people, really high percentage. Now you could argue that's because some of them had vulnerable health conditions, but, but I don't have a vulnerable health condition. Now, I didn't have a DNR put on me, but I know lots of friends with a similar level of impairment who did. And you know, that was basically saying a disabled person has no right to treatment if you get COVID.
Craig Oliver: Yes.
Tanni Grey-Thompson: It was on Newsnight, it was in the press for about a day and a half, and the public reaction was ‘Yeah, whatever.’
Craig Oliver: And how do, do you get angry about that or do you just feel like, I'm just determined to, to change this?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: I, I thought we wouldn't still be fighting for some of this nonsense by this point in my life. Determined to kind of keep going and to keep kind of pushing and, the reason I post on social media so much about trains, it's, some of it is to challenge the train operating companies in a public way But also some of it's about educating non disabled people.
Craig Oliver: I looked at your social media feeds yesterday in preparation for this and literally it was a list of train stations as far as I could see, that..
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Yeah,
Craig Oliver: …these stations are crap in terms of access, but it went on for a very, very, very long time.
Tanni Grey-Thompson: It's actually really interesting now that I see people, you know, I spend a lot of time on trains, where I'll get a non-disabled person come up to me saying, ‘Are you alright, do you need a hand? I've seen you on social media.’ Which is really sweet because it's how you can get people to help and understand about the change that, that we need.
Actually I've got one lovely story. A friend of mine, Dame Kelly Holmes, we've known each other for years. She was on a train, she saw a wheelchair user, was stuck and basically went up and said, ‘Are you trying to get off?’ Yeah, there was no ramp. She corralled a couple of strong young men and, and helped the wheelchair user off the train and then rang me going, ‘Oh, God, I'm not sure I was meant to do that?’ And it was like, ‘No, no, no, that was, you know, always ask. And if somebody doesn't want to be lifted, don't do it.’ You know, there's a lot, but she'd seen me trains and was like, right, I'm going to do something. So, you know, it's like, hold the door open, find a member of staff.
Craig Oliver: I think it's brilliant you say that because I think that genuinely helps a lot of people. But in some of the conversations I've had with you before, I think you sort of opened my eyes in terms of saying, If you have a disability, life is just much more expensive, because you need to try to live more centrally.
And you need to live in a building that's properly kitted out and all of that kind of thing. And, I think it's that, failure to just think that through and imagine that, is the thing, isn't it? That we able bodied people just fail to understand that or see that. And I do think it's interesting that other campaigns, rightly, managed to get the attention in a way that this is struggling and just interested in you reflecting on why you think that is?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: I mean, interestingly some of the lobbying groups in the seventies and eighties for disabled people had much more profile and were stronger. You know, some things with the internet has made us easier to connect on social media. But actually, I do worry we've got a younger generation of people who think that. Because there's more access than there used to be that the fights, not to be had or there's no need to fight it. And I talked to a lot of young women, about misogyny and, it's still out there and it's still pretty strong. And, maybe younger people are fighting for different things? They're thinking of climate and, there's other things that they care about. And that's really important that they fight for things that they care. But there's lots of older disabled people who are tired of the fights because it can be just exhausting, trying to fight for these things all the time. You know, somebody said to me, ‘Well, why don't disabled people come and protest in London?’ And it's like, well, cause you can only get one wheelchair user on a bus at a time. It takes us three and a half weeks to get everyone in London. I don't mean to be flippant about it, but you know, some of that stuff is just hard to do.
Craig Oliver: If you could wave a magic wand in terms of public understanding and changing things, what would be the great thing, the great change, the great shift in perspective?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: I'd change the support system, the benefit system. So, what you have to do, is you have to prove what you can't do to get support. And I would rather do it, I mean this makes it very difficult to put into a nice, easy, questionnaire or assessment box, but what can people do if you give them money and support? So, this is probably picking up on, you know, some of the Scandinavian countries where they've done a universal income. I think there's smarter things that we can do with the money that we have and move away from this inspiration porn and this sort of slightly patronizing attitude.
Craig Oliver: It's like, like you're saying see another human being there rather than separate them and make them different, like don't say you have to be inspired by them just because they're in a wheelchair, just see that they're another human being?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Yeah, that's a better way of saying it. I mean, I was getting off the train last night and somebody said, ‘Oh, do you want a hand to the gate line?’ It's like, ‘No, I'm fine. Thanks,’ and they're like, ‘Don't, I'll give you a hand.’ Again, it was like, ‘No, no, I'm fine, you know, I can manage all the stuff that I'm bringing with me.’ I don't know what they thought I was going to do, if I needed help to get to the gate line, I don't know what they thought I was going to do when I got beyond the gate line? I didn't have that conversation because it was 10 o'clock at night I think I'd also move away from this idea that we all have carers.
So actually some of the fights, my husband and I have had over the years, was, was when there's an assumption that he is my carer, you know, um, and it's like, he's really not, I mean, some funny stories around that where we were going to a London tourist attraction. They were actually trying to give us a discount for him being my carer and we were probably the only people who argued that we wanted to pay full price because he is not my carer. So yeah, just treat people like human beings and we're really bad at wanting to put people in boxes. and I don't think that's helpful for anybody.

Craig Oliver: In your book you were saying that there's a picture of you in a wheelchair trying to skip. And I must admit, I was thinking, I don't get it. What are you talking about? Just explain that.

Tanni Grey-Thompson: Yeah. So my, my parents brought me up to believe just to try stuff. So don't sort of sit there and go, I don't like it, don’t feel like eating your greens, you know, try it before you, you complain about it. And, I was on a brownie pack holiday in Swansea and everyone else was skipping and I was sitting there and it was like, okay, I'm going to just chuck the rope over my head. I mean, was doing because it's, it's not the same as that sort of jumping back.
Craig Oliver: Did you think you'd somehow be able to lift the wheelchair?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: I don't know what I thought actually. I mean, I think I was just being stubborn and awkward and difficult because everyone else was doing an activity I couldn't do. And there was no inclusion, I don't think I thought it through in quite this way.
But, I was sitting on the sideline watching everyone else skip. And there wasn't a thought of, okay, how can we do something with Tanni where I'm just not sitting watching other people. So I think I was probably being difficult more than anything else.
Craig Oliver: Were you clear from very early on that you were going to impose yourself was that just in you in your personality because it seems like from all the things that you've managed to achieve that? That must have been really part of you?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Yeah, I mean, I recognize that I'm stubborn and quite difficult and challenging and people don't always know what to do with me. It's my mother's personality trait. My sisters, my daughters, my grandmothers. Stubbornness has, has been a big part of my life and it's what made me successful as an athlete in terms of, you know, this is the training group I'm going to have around me. These are the coaches I'm going to have, because they're the best coach for me. I always sit down and look at, let's have a reasonable conversation about what I'm going to do and why I'm doing it, but, but that kind of drive and that selfishness made me a good athlete. And my family allowed me to be selfish.
Craig Oliver: Did you know that sport was for you then? Did you know that, that I've got an actual talent in this and I can do this?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Not straight away, absolutely not. I mean, I wasn't very good at wheelchair racing for quite a few years. My parents wanted me to play lots of sports, be fit and healthy and active, to lead an independent life. And, you know, you have some lucky breaks along the way, and, a lot of it with sport is, you deal with huge ups and downs, sometimes very publicly, you know, you've got to be honest with yourself.
You've got to train hard. You've got to train smart. You've got to have the right people around you. You've just got to be focused. So, I married an athlete. Probably my dad would say it's the only one who put up with me. So when we were picking our date for getting married, it was like we got out of competition schedule. And it's like, I’, not missing a race to marry Ian, and Ian wouldn't miss a race to marry me. For our honeymoon, we joined a Swiss national squad training camp.
Craig Oliver: Looking back on that now, do you think I had the right perspective?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Yeah, it was great. It was like, I mean…
Craig Oliver: And you'd found somebody that also saw it that way?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: I couldn't have been with someone who didn't, understand, not necessarily being an athlete, but needed to understand me as a person.
Craig Oliver: I just want to go back to the bit of getting into sport though. Because we're sort of slightly racing ahead here. And in your book Aim High, you said you tried basketball. And it ended after you slapped someone.
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Yeah.
Craig Oliver: Tell me the story. Can I push you on that one ask what happened?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: eah. So, I played a bit of basketball, loved it. I mean, I've been, I've watched the Men's GB team play and was like, wow, this is amazing. I'd gone to Stoke Mandeville for a competition and we played in mixed teams and this boy on the other team, kept elbowing me and, and, and it just sort of literally doing that, I mean, my shoulder, my tricep, bicep, it really hurts and just was shoving me around the court.
And, and actually this is where, you know, a lot of my learning to control my temper came from was that he was trying to wind me up. And he did. So I hit him. Right in front of the referee.
Craig Oliver: Were you out of the game?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Oh yeah, yeah, I was off. It was like, yeah, you can't do that. So I think the ref said something to me about, well done for, you know, being up there, and kind of fight, but you can't go around hitting people.
So actually that was a really, I was 12. So that was a really important lesson that you, you can't react because then, you know, I didn't get much court time after that. And it was from that point that I was like, okay, what else do I want to do? And then I'd started doing a bit of wheelchair racing and I wasn't terribly excited by it at first, but then did it a little bit more and enjoyed it and just wanted to keep going and do more and more. And then it was, so it was a massive part of my life.
Craig Oliver: And your book is, the first one is called Aim High. And you spend some time in that saying it's not the full saying. Can you just say what the full saying is?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Yeah, it was something that my grandfather used to say and it was, ‘Aim high even if you hit a cabbage.’ Like, literally, no one has any idea where it came from, but my granddad used to say it to me all the time, and, I think I've taken it to be what I want it to mean as well, it's about having a golden dream, it's about just giving it a go, it's about not giving up, and there's other versions of it around, um, and it just…
Craig Oliver: What does that mean, even if you hit a cabbage?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: We've no idea. Not a clue. I mean, I think, I think what it means is, try, and if it doesn't work out, you try it. It's that kind of Aim for the Stars and You Hit the Moon, we've no idea where it comes from. But, as a young athlete, and all the way through, it's really important because, for me, it was what are you're aiming for? Winning a junior championship and then, getting selected for seniors and you keep resetting your goals and, when your goals hit, ‘I'm trying to win four gold medals at the Paralympics’ and break some world records, that determination and that focus that you need, you have loads of downs moments along the way that you need to find a way of picking yourself up.
Craig Oliver: I took it to mean the path to success is never going to be smooth and straight, and that actually, you are going to hit difficulties, the key is to learn from those, and not just be thrown off course.
Tanni Grey-Thompson: It's different now in a world of social media, but, for a lot of my time in sport, people would just see a couple of races that I won, and they wouldn't see the fact that, we were training two or three times a day, six days a week, 50 weeks a year.
They didn't see, you know, the fact that, I didn't take any time off to get married My daughter, I took two weeks extra off training. They don't see all that. I mean, there's, there's programs being made and there's bits people get to see….actually what the public does see is that there's this massive privilege in competing for GB and it is amazing. But they don't see that mostly training is really dull and boring and it's repetitive. I didn't get excited by training. I did it and it’s exhausting.
Craig Oliver: Getting up early and…?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: I never did that. I wasn't one of these, I'm going to train at half six in the morning. But, it's your whole life, you can't, for me, I couldn't really go out with my mates because they wanted to stay out till three o'clock in the morning and I don't, even now, I don't really drink. I was very focused on my diet because my race weight was 45 kilos. So, I was very obsessive about what I ate. Because I needed that to have the chair built around me and the power to weigh. So, I don't regret any of that. Because it was, it's how do you put into context all the bad, so, you know, the, the, the blisters aren't bad, but you know, injuries or, not winning…
Craig Oliver: I thought what was really interesting, in your books, you talk about the races that, you know, in, in winning the gold medals but you spent much more time on, I think, one particular race that you didn't win, where you were expected to win, and failing in that, and how that made you feel. It's almost as if you're saying that maybe you learned a lot more from that one than you did for others.
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Yeah, so this was Athens, My final Paralympics. I knew it was going to be my final Paralympics, although I'm not sure my team managers did. I knew that I wasn't going to do Beijing at that point. And it was my first event, strongest event, and I made a split second decision in the final, which was the wrong one and put myself behind the slowest person in the race.
And when I came off the track it was fairly depressing. When my team manager was struggling to speak to me, because his job was based on gold medals and he'd do the TV interview, which was, are you too old? What happened? You know, you lost it. And you see disappointment on, on lots of people's faces.
So some of that stuff's, yeah, really difficult because even for me. That, that was, my strongest event. And I thought, you, you've got no right to win anything. You absolutely haven't. But I thought that was my best chance of, of doing well, at the games. So yeah. And people still, I mean, I talk about it a bit.
Craig Oliver: What did you learn from it?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: I learnt who my friends were. I mean, I kind of knew that anyway from previous things that happened to me. But I would say, people's reaction to me was very interesting. So either within the team or, some people who were generally concerned about me and some who weren't.
Some who just saw me as a producer of a medal, which you are, in elite sport, it's very transactional. You know, we now talk about an aspiration to medal. God knows when that came about. Well, you know, you're a medalist. So most athletes are introduced by the color of the medal. This is one of our gold medalists, she's Tanni. It's so tied up in it, but it's, it's kind of taught me, you don't have any right to anything. Even if you work incredibly hard, you know, you don't, you don't have any right to anything.
Craig Oliver: Yeah, I think, I think I understand that essentially that you can put all this energy and effort in and you can feel like you deserve something but actually, ultimately there's no deserving. Sometimes the breaks just go one way and that's just it really. Can you accept that, and then pick yourself up and keep trying?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: There's loads of times that I haven't won races. And, I've struggled to come back. There's all these sorts of different things. I think it was just in a really public environment. You know? There were people around who thought I should maybe go on and try and do Beijing and I just didn't want to. And I think that was a moment where it was like, okay. I don't think I can get any quicker. So the medals are always a byproduct of everything else you do, because you've always got to be quicker and stronger. And every season at the end of the season, I'd look and go, I think I can be better next year, and that was the first time that it was like, okay, I'm not sure I can get any better and if I can't get better, I'm definitely not going to win.
Craig Oliver: And this thing's dominated your life? It's been exactly, as you say, decided when you're gonna get married, when you're gonna have your child, all this kind of stuff is based around that. Facing the fact that this thing that has been so structural and dominant, how was that? Did you, did you have a sense that I can continue?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: I mean, it took me another two years to. Because it comes back to don't make a rash decision in that moment, you know, so I lost really badly my 800. I went into the two medals, two gold medals and, that is never the moment to make this momentous decision. But I've been thinking about my retirement since I was 21. So I'm kind of planning for it. So partly at the end of every season, my dad used to say to me. ‘Okay, so you still haven't got a pension and yeah, you've traveled to some lovely countries around the world, but when you're going to get a proper job?’ That was always kind of, it used to be a bit of a joke, but it was kind of quite useful.
But I wanted to be in control of my retirement and what I did next. And I kind of needed, kind of a year and a half to, to really put plans into place and just figure out those next steps. I wasn't frightened of leaving sport because I knew I'd be doing something else. So the plan always was to do law conversion, and be a lawyer. and then I ended up in the Lords instead. So, it's still in the same sort of space that I was kind of aiming for. Now I'm arguing about lines in legislation rather than acting it. So I wasn't worried about giving up sport because I knew I'd be doing something else that fulfilled me.
Craig Oliver: We'll come on to the Lords in a moment, because I think there's a lot there. But just quickly, we were just talking then about what you learn from losing. But there's also a couple of stories that you tell about your daughter, Carys, when you'd won. And you'd come to her afterwards and said, ‘Did you see Mummy?’ And she's like, ‘No, I was eating a hot dog.’ And that, to me, it's a sweet, funny story. But it is also a reminder of Of course, this matters hugely, but also it doesn't matter at all.
Tanni Grey-Thompson: No, I mean, she was two. And then, she wasn't the least bit interested whether I lost my 800 or won my 100, which is my next event. I remember when I did my last race, my last GB race, I decided I was going to retire at the end of 2006. And then I was asked to do one more race in Manchester very early 2007 and have that as my retirement race.
So it's like, okay. The race organizers had said like, do you want us to just put a race around you that you're gonna win? And I was like, no, because that’d be really stupid, because if I'm winning, you know, what, why am I retiring? So, so they, they basically put the Paralympic final around me. And that was good. I came second. And that was like, okay, this is the right thing to do. Some journalists had asked could they be with my sister and daughter, Carys and, do an interview with Carys, you know, in my final race. And one of the journalists said to Carys, just as I came across the finish line, what do you think of Mummy? Don't you think she's amazing? And Carys response was, ‘She goes round in circles.’ So, that was Carys's, you know, she was four by that point, that, that's all she saw. So I think that's quite sweet to have that normality around, and quite important really my father never let me define myself as being an athlete.
So yeah, it was a really important thing in my life, but he didn't see that as anything. My sister's a nurse. I think he thought she had more value to society than I did, but you know, he would always be, ‘Well, what else are you apart from being an athlete?’ Because it's so easy when you're consumed by it to not have anything else. So dad he'd say, like, you're a Venn diagram. Everyone's a Venn diagram. And that perspective, I think, is really important because that meant that I wasn't frightened about retiring. Because even now, people come up to me and say, ‘Oh, you used to, or you're that athlete.’ Yeah, a long time ago. And, it was quite funny before Tokyo, I was at petrol station. So I was going out working in the media and someone stopped me and said, ‘Oh, you know, are you excited about Tokyo?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be amazing. You know, a bit weird because of COVID’. And they're like, ‘Oh, how's your training going?’ And you're like…
Craig Oliver: I've given up for a long time.
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Yeah. You're saying, you know, well…
Craig Oliver: So tell me about the post stuff, because I looked at your CV and there was just this endless list of all these boards and entities and charities and things that you've been involved in, big important public bodies, that kind of thing. And I suppose the first question that came to me was, don't take this wrong way, but are you a workaholic?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Yeah, totally. . My dad was. I am.
Craig Oliver: And so, what’s all that about do you think?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: I don't think of it as proving myself, but I get asked that a lot about sport. You know, am I trying to prove something to somebody? I think I'm probably trying to prove something to my parents who are long passed away, but that's still there. Actually, I don't think it's anything to do with my disability, I'm not trying to prove that I can be the same as some other non, some successful non disabled person. I think it's recognising that I have a platform for a period of time to do stuff. And I have to use it. So, there's things that I've gone in and I've joined and I've tried to help and support and you go, actually, I'm not making any difference. I'm going to leave. And I think that's okay. As long as you're straight and honest with people, if I'm not making a difference to stuff, then don't have me sitting around the table because there's no point. I'm very lucky, a lot of stuff I do kind of fits. It's a bit, my diary is a bit of a big jigsaw, but I can, I can do a lot of stuff and I like working. I like feeling I'm doing something. And if I ever get to the point where I feel I'm not making a difference in the Lords, I'd leave.
Craig Oliver: We spoke to the playwright, James Graham, incredibly successful playwright, has done some brilliant stuff, and he was saying that there was a moment where he realised that, workholism was like other isms, it's in some ways a form of addiction, basically a way of filling a hole or he, in his personal case, I'm not saying this applies to you, but he was saying that it was sometimes a way of avoiding intimacy you know, I can't do this because I have to finish this scene or whatever. Is there any of that in you?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: I don't think so. It's never felt like that. I'm very lucky that it's always felt like a choice. So actually very few people have real choice in their lives. So I don't ever feel like it's to avoid intimacy. It's like, okay, I believe I have one life. I have one amount of time to do stuff and I do the stuff. And again, this is privilege. I did the stuff I like doing.
Craig Oliver: There's so many things you've been involved in. Are any of the achievement many achievements you've had since do they match up to winning a gold medal?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Yeah, just in a different way. So, a gold medal in front of a big stadium and all the adulation and all that stuff that comes with it. It's pretty cool. I'm probably, you know, a group of us got positions on a new legislation under the statute books a while ago, and it was really boring how it came about with no great debate. I spent about five years working on this, very emotional, really hard hitting, and I was all ready to make this really stark, brutal speech and when the time came, everyone in the chamber was like, yeah, good idea. Didn't have to make it.
Craig Oliver: It reminds me of a film about Martin Luther King called Selma and normally in a drama there would be this moment where, there's a confrontation and there's a battle and he wins. And actually what happened was there was going to be a confrontation and he pulled everybody back so there wasn't a massive fight and actually a few weeks later it sort of gently rolled across the line. But it was a massively major achievement. It just wasn't the drama would expect in a major film or something. And life is like that, isn't it? It's not necessarily crossing the line a split ahead, but something that's been achieved.
Tanni Grey-Thompson: So this bill had been through the commons and there was pushback on it. So basically it made it illegal for a sports coach to be in a sexual relationship with a 16 to 17 year old.
And what I was expecting in this moment was that, I would make this massive emotional speech, take everybody with me because I've been an athlete and I had some really, powerful things to say. And, everyone was going to go, yay! And yeah, I didn't need to do it. So it's knowing, it's reading the race, it's reading the chamber. You know, it's knowing when you can make that big speech. You're knowing when to just shut up. I wouldn't say I’m getting it right all the time. I think actually being an athlete has been really helpful going into politics because it's all about people. In sport, it's about your training group, understanding the performance director, sponsors, media, working with people. And that's what politics is.
Craig Oliver: And we talk a lot on this podcast to people who are either involved in politics directly or indirectly or journalists and a lot of them feel that the state of modern politics is, is not a great one. How do you feel about it?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Politics is always a bit weird. I think where we are now is really challenging. So, everyone's waiting for a general election. I think everyone, I mean, that's, that's a big, you know, people who care about Westminster, you can see MPs are getting ready for it, you know, because their job's on the line.
It's a very weird and strange life. There are a lot of MPs who are brilliant and amazing. and some less so. And we're doing some really big, difficult things. So, you know, on the back of Brexit Queen Elizabeth's passing, that had a different impact on Parliament from what I expected in terms of, not just sort of the emotion, but, the Queen, whatever your view of the monarchy, that had been a constant, in a lot of people's lives and a constant in the, in the chambers, because everything's Her Majesty's government, I mean, it probably took me and others a year to go, you know, His Majesty's government, so there were things that were just different. The Rwanda legislation, the government are trying to get across the line. There's some really big, not very pleasant things that we're doing.
And there's always been big unpleasant things we're not doing. It's just a lot of those things feel like they're coming together. At the moment, and I do worry about people's lack of engagement with Westminster. And I get really frustrated when I hear people,sort of my age and old say, ‘Oh, young people, you know, they don't care about politics.’
Well, I think what they disengage with is Prime Minister's questions. I don't think it's as good as it used to be. It used to be witty and amusing and clever and smart. Now it's just a bit like, meh, meh, meh. But that is not what we do in Westminster.
We do a lot of outreach. The House of Lords has an outreach programme. We go to a lot of schools. It's really interesting. It's really, it's really important for us to connect with young people and listen to what young people are saying. And, and there's pretty much not a young person, you know, who doesn't care about something.
It just doesn't necessarily connect to what we, we do. So I kind of, you know, ignore young people at your peril. So yeah, sure. It's a bit strange at the moment. I think everyone. Is waiting for a, a general election, to try and rebalance. And it's almost like you need a, a stop and a, a, a start again, but we we're not done yet.
Craig Oliver: You've been incredibly generous with your time, the one question I always ask at the end is, like, if there was one piece of wisdom that you could pass on, you've had so many experiences, what would yours be?
Tanni Grey-Thompson: I think it'd be, take a breath. Just take a moment. I live with the consequences of all the decisions I've made. Some good ones and some not so good ones. At, at the time I always thought I was doing the right thing. There's, there's plenty of ups and downs, in my career, but I think, it's take a breath and talk to people who, good people to speak to. So, not necessarily friends or family. I've got somebody who is, you know, honest, open with me. I wouldn't say we're friends, but we do some work together where they will tell me what they think. And it's a really honest, open relationship. Put people like that around you who will tell you what they think, not what you want
to hear.
Craig Oliver: It's an amazing piece of advice, and it's one that I feel has been incredibly relevant my life. I think relatively late on, I was told, Try and find a way to respond, not react, try and find a way that you're not just like, somebody sends me an email and I'm going to respond and take them to pieces or have the argument or feel that this big thing in front of me really matters, actually, almost always when it can just be a breath, as you say, or it can be pausing overnight or just leaving something.
It's extraordinary how differently you think and feel. And it's also, I think, true that something that seems unbelievably important to you in this moment in a day, a week, a month, just feels almost inconsequential. But at the time, it's absolutely massive. But if you can find a way to just put that wedge in and say, I am not just going to react here, it's a huge thing.
Tanni Grey-Thompson: Yeah, and I've learned that along the way and it's actually how you can be considered and take people with you not wanting that moment where, you say that really witty amusing thing that puts them in the place and gets them on their knees begging for an apology. That doesn't happen.
It just, you know, so, I just think it's important to take time, and hopefully, most of the time I do that, or I try to do it. But without, for me, without really good people around me, and I've got probably five or six really good people, then I wouldn't be able to do the things that I do.
Craig Oliver: It's certainly easier said than done. But anyway, listen, Tani, you've been absolutely amazing. I really appreciate you taking the time Really learned a lot and and thank you for all your insights