I still find it strange, I suppose, when I say to someone, ‘Can you just pass me my leg?’ But I don’t ever think about my disability.
Rio in four years; I’ve got more inspiration in the last two, three weeks. I’m sure I’m going to get more in the Paralympics in the next coming weeks, so by the end of this season, I’m going to take a month off, and then the next four years is going to be good.
These have always been my legs. I train harder than other guys, eat better, sleep better and wake up thinking about athletics. I think that’s probably why I’m a bit of an exception.
Putting on my legs is like putting on my shoes. I understand that’s how some people might think differently, but I hope that in London, their perceptions open up.
I can have my goals, and I can have my dreams. My goal is to make the finals and improve my position. I want to run all decent races. I don’t want to look back and say I ran a terrible race.
Out of the tens of thousands of prosthetic legs they’ve made, there’s never been any 400-meter athletes run under 50 seconds. So, if this was such a technologically advanced prosthetic leg, then how come not everyone’s qualifying, or coming close to the qualification time, then?
I have a phenomenal team behind me who have helped get me here and I, along with them, will now put everything we can into the final few weeks of preparations before the Olympic Games, where I am aiming to race well, work well through the rounds, post good times and maybe even a personal best time on the biggest stage of them all.
When you’re competing, you don’t have the choice of what the weather will be like. It really doesn’t affect me. I ran one of my fastest times in the New York Diamond League meeting last year. It was raining pretty hard then.
Thank you to everyone that has made me the athlete I am! God, family and friends, my competitors and supporters! You have all had a hand!
My parents didn’t give me any scope to feel sorry for myself. They were just like ‘go play with your brother, go climb a tree, go fall off your motorbike, do whatever you want. Don’t come crying to us when you get scratched. You’ve got prosthetic legs – that’s very nice.’
I’d like to show people that if you put the hard work in and you believe in yourself, then you can do whatever you want to.