Paralympic Games 2016: Swimmer Steph Slater closes in on Rio dream after cruel end to London hopes

The pages are turning quickly now, less than 300 days until Great Britain’s Paralympic swimmers break water in Rio. Gold medal prospect Steph Slater returned to the pool in September after her latest anatomical trial. On this occasion a congenital hip condition proved treatable and after surgery in February followed by dry rehabilitation she is once more putting in the hard lengths at the GB training base in Manchester.

She remains blind in one eye, without the use of her left arm and managing a two-centimetre discrepancy in leg length –nothing an insole doesn’t sort out, she says – but those hips allow her legs to pound the aqua, and if she had to, she would kick her way across the Atlantic to take her place on the Brazilian blocks.

Actually, her legs, ordinarily the most important piston in a swimmer’s engine, are not her most powerful asset. That would be an attitude that immolates negative thoughts in the happy chamber of her beautiful mind.

For her Rio is the fulfilment of a wish that had a different focus five years ago when she had full command of all her limbs, a Commonwealth Games silver in her pocket and London 2012 was the target. She got there not as a competitor but as a “Gamesmaker”, one of the thousands of volunteers who transformed the national landscape during that magnificently uplifting sporting congress.

What might have been a distressing experience following a systemic failure of the nerves in her arm that ended her first swimming career morphed into a validating episode of Damascene dimensions. “I was training really hard for London 2012 and to have that dream taken away so suddenly out of the blue was really difficult. But to have the opportunity to volunteer at the Games was amazing. I can’t thank them enough because I wouldn’t be here today doing this without the volunteering experience.”

Slater pulled up lame during a routine training session, her left arm inexplicably and suddenly a reservoir of pain. It would take two years to diagnose damage to the brachial plexus, the network of nerves connecting the brain to the hand via the shoulder and arm.

“I can use thumb and finger but can’t lift above my head. I’ve adapted to do everything with one arm now, like my hair etc. I have lived with vision in only one eye since I was 11. I adapted to that, so it was quite easy to get used to just using one arm. My grandma always said just take everything with a smile. She had TB when she was younger and was ill for most of her life, but she was always smiling, so I must have got it from her. I’m not one to sit at home and dwell, ‘Oh I’ve got this injury that can’t be cured’.”

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What Slater presents in every fibre of her being is the manifesto of getting on. She is the can-do candidate for Preston. She delivers her message via the para-swimming S8 category, but not in her former specialist subject of breaststroke, which proved too difficult with one arm. Not so the S8 butterfly, for which she holds the 100m world record, posted at the European Championships last year, when she also won individual gold in the 50m butterfly, 100m backstroke and 100m freestyle.

Injury forced her to miss the IPC World Championships this July, serving only to strengthen her desire to compete in Rio. “It is always a dream to break a world record but when I did it last summer words could not describe the feeling. I kept looking at the scoreboard saying ‘No, I haven’t done that time’. I had tears in my eyes and the board was all blurry. I couldn’t really take it in, that I was a world record holder.

“Rio will be even more magical having missed out in 2012. London inspired me to get back in the pool so this is my ultimate dream. I visited Rio last November to train. It was amazing then so I can’t begin to imagine what it will be like when the Paralympics is on.”

Slater’s world-best time of 1:08.20 lowered the previous record held by America’s Jessica Long by more than a second. She was a world-class swimmer before her physical impairment, and is no less so now, which is a key part of the vision she is keen to project.

“The talent pool is just as deep. Jessica Long is a phenomenal athlete. It was a privilege to race against her, to beat her with a world record just blew me away. I have never met anyone like her. In my category there is massive competition with her and the likes of Maddison Elliott and Lakeisha Patterson from Australia plus a couple of Russian girls.

“You cannot for one minute think you can ease off or relax. Just because it is Paralympic sport does not mean the demand is not as great. It is every bit as intense.”

When Slater is not in the pool she is indulging her other great passion, volunteering, which proved the catalyst in 2012 to her para-swimming career. She divides her time between Preston Swimming Club and the Disability Sports Club in the town, and when she is not doing that she devotes one day a week to Manchester Children’s Hospital, where she hopes to work as a nurse. “A lot of thanks go to the volunteering community, they are special people, very inspiring. Very little gets done without them at grassroots level. I have been in sport all my life. I wanted to give something back, even if I couldn’t be part of it as a competitor. To wear that Gamesmaker kit every day is something I shall never forget.”

Steph Slater volunteers at Preston Swimming Club. To find local volunteer opportunities visit: joininuk.org/bighelpout