British paralympian hero to end glittering career

DAME Tanni Grey-Thompson, Britain's most successful Paralympian, choked back the tears yesterday as she confirmed her retirement from international competition.

The 37-year-old wheelchair racer competed in five Paralympic Games and won an incredible haul of 11 gold medals, four silver and one bronze. Grey-Thompson was also a distinguished long-distance athlete and won six London Marathons, her last in 2002 just three months after giving birth to daughter Carys.

She will bring an illustrious career to a close at the Visa Paralympic World Cup in Manchester's Velodrome this May. Grey-Thompson said: "It has been 26 years of my life. Every decision I have made since the age of 14 has been based around wheelchair racing - which university to go to, who I married, when I got married, when to have my daughter. Everything has been racing and now that is going to change. I never thought there would be anything more important than athletics.

"But for me to go to Beijing and win I'd be away from home for too long and that is not what I want to do. My daughter is five now. I have always said I'd retire when I had done enough. I think, finally, I have done enough.

"Everything starts to hurt a little bit more these days and I want to enjoy the rest of my life, not be destroyed by it."

Typically, Grey-Thompson is determined to leave her sporton a high.

"It would make a nice end to the story if I did win at the World Cup," she said.

That story is an inspirational tale of an elite athlete who overcame physical hardship to push back the boundaries of disability sport and win respect the world over.

She was born in Cardiff in 1969 with spina bifida and has been confined to a wheelchair since the age of seven - but that could not hinder her competitive drive.

Inspired by Chris Hallam winning London's wheelchair marathon in 1985 and Ed Moses competing at the 1984 Olympics, she won a bronze medal on her Paralympic debut at the Seoul Games in 1988. Four years later in Barcelona she won golds at 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m and a relay silver.

She retained the 800m crown in Atlanta and, after marrying her coach Ian Thompson, had another clean sweep of golds at the 2000 Sydney Games.

Grey-Thompson suffered a huge setback by finishing seventh in the Athens 800m but bounced back to win golds in the 100m and 400m and take her Paralympic medal tally to 16.

She was made a Dame of the Order of the British Empire in 2005 after being awarded an MBE in 1993 in recognition of her work for disability sport and an OBE in 2000.