Disability is no hurdle for archer Brown

NEW DELHI - Few could imagine what para athlete archer Danielle Brown is poised to achieve. A debut gold medal at the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing, the four-time world champion is now set to become the first England paralympic athlete to compete in an able-bodied event in the Oct 3-14 Commonwealth Games.

Brown, 22, cannot walk because of a chronic pain syndrome in her feet but she is full of beans

as she talks about taking up the “life-time opportunity” at the New Delhi Games where archery is making its debut.

“This is the first time I am competing against able bodied athletes. And this is the first time I am taking part in Commonwealth Games. It is also the first time that archery is being included in the Commonwealth Games, so this could well be a lifetime opportunity,” said Danielle,

“I am very excited and I am glad that I got this opportunity.”

“In Britain when I am competing we do not have any domestic disabled competition. The only disabled competition you have are at the international level. So, in the domestic competitions I am competing with able bodied guys anyways.”

Brown, when 16, was diagonsed with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD), a malfunction of the nervous system that causes pain and sensory abnormalities.

“I never wanted to use a wheelchair, but getting into the Paralympic squad changed my view,” said Danielle, who had a custom-built stool developed for her at Loughborough University so that she could comfortably aim at the bulls’ eye.

It is an everyday fight for Brown as she struggles to cope with pain while also developing strategies to deal with it.

“With my disability I had to be mentally strong. For me the worst time of the day is morning when I have to get out of bed and it is just a nightmare being in so much pain. I just had to put all that to one side, so I guess in the sports, that also helps me. I had to develop strategies to cope with the pain.”

“I played golf, did a lot of walking and cycling.”

“But at the age of 13 I had to give up all sports. I did not actually consider myself as disabled at the time and I didnt know anything about paralympic sport in general because there was not much information. So, I thought since archery does not involve much running, I could do it. I had problems in the beginning, collecting my arrows but it was good fun,” she said.

Danielle was not sure of competing at the Commonwealth Games, but she made up her mind after timely advice from boyfriend, Ali Jawad, a Paralympic powerlifter.

“I was not going to turn up for the selection trials. I qualified three days before the closing dates because I was in Arizona on a paralympic training trip. I was doing my third year of law and I had just given 10 days to my revision schedule to go to Arizona, so I thought I was not going to bother turning up. But my boyfriend told me this is once in a lifetime opportunity and that I really had to do it. So here I am, really glad to make the trip.”

“I was really under no pressure and I performed well in the trials.”

Asked about the facilites for para athletes here, she said: “The wheelchair accessibility and the rooms are absolutely fantastic. Last year at the World Championships in Czech Republic, we could not even get the wheelchair through the bathroom doors so all the guys were in the wheelchair permanantly. So if you had to use the toilet in the middle of the night, you had to wheel down to reception which made things very tough.”

(Avishek Roy can be contacted at avishek.r@ians.in)