An hour before Lauren Steadman entered the water at the western end of Copacabana, ParalympicsGB’s head triathlon coach was urging caution. Although Steadman began the PT4 race as the heavy favourite, the paratriathlon is a young and unpredictable sport and the form book is not always a reliable guide. Take nothing for granted was the message from Jonathon Riall. Expect the unexpected.
Riall could not have spoken more highly of Steadman. “Lauren is a great athlete,” he said. “She’s driven, she’s determined, she doesn’t like to lose.” However, in sweltering conditions in Rio, the 23-year-old fell short of victory despite leading the US’s Grace Norman by 23 seconds when she got off the bike. Steadman was annoyed with herself after making an error in her swim, which is her strongest event, and although she dealt with the treacherous transitions and gave herself a chance after the bike, it was not enough to hold off Norman.
Gold in triathlon’s Paralympic debut was within touching distance but Norman had other ideas, running superbly to push Steadman into second place. Having finished outside the top three as a swimmer at Beijing 2008 and London 2012, at least she won her first Paralympic medal.
Asked why her swim was slower than expected, Steadman said: “I was leading at the first buoy, which was my plan. Then when I saw the canoes I was like: ‘Oh God.’ I looked and they were all to the left and I looked back and saw the orange buoy. I swam back 25m. I had to swim an extra 25m which would probably have been about 45 or 50 seconds.”
Another British gold medal hopeful, Alison Patrick, was unable to live with Australia’s Katie Kelly in the PT5 race. Patrick settled for silver and her team-mate, Melissa Reid, won bronze.
The paratriathlon is an event fraught with difficulties. While it is half the distance of its Olympic counterpart, with competitors swimming for 750 metres in open water, cycling for 20km and running for 5km, the transitions between disciplines are much harder.
Despite Sunday’s near misses, Riall viewed the weekend as a success for Britain. Adam Lewis, a through-the-knee amputee who lost his left leg when he was hit by a 38-tonne lorry at the age of 16, made history when he won the men’s PT2 race on Saturday morning. He did not just have to put on trainers when he switched from the bike to the running, he had to put on a new leg.
The PT1 triathletes, who compete in wheelchairs, have handlers to help them during the transitions, meaning their performance is partly reliant on someone else, a little like a pit stop during a Formula One race. The PT2 triathletes are the most severely impaired, the PT4 the least.
“Where an able-bodied athlete will change their shoes, Andy’s shoes go up to his mid-thigh really,” Riall said. “He has a socket that he puts on when he comes out of the swim. The way that Andy has evolved to cope is to keep his socket on for his bike event and he’s developed the technology to simply change the bottom half. He has a screw to screw on, he tightens it, gets back off the bike, untightens the screw and puts the running blade on.
“Unlike the Olympics where it’s bike packs where they work together, this is absolutely an individual effort. It’s just a test of how good one athlete is at three disciplines in its purest form really. Across all the disciplines in all the categories that we have, the guys have a range of different disabilities which means they have to think differently about how to execute their race. In terms of the training that our athletes do compared to Olympic athletes, I wouldn’t say it’s any different. Triathlon is an individual sport so you’ll always get athletes who work incredibly hard.
“But where it is different is mainly around the technical areas. Around our technical area now, I’m looking at how many adaptations to bikes there are. If you are an arm amputee, there are adaptations to handle bars and gears. There’s a lot of thought that goes into that. It all takes time.
“Where it really does differ is the leg amputees. Transition is an area that is crucial in our sport. You only have to look at the results to see if people win or lose races depending on how they look at their transitions. Thinking about how an athlete with a disability moves between sports.”
Steadman, who was born without her right forearm, could not be accused of lacking focus. Her problem was that Norman, an 18-year-old who grew up looking after the pigs on the family farm in Ohio, produced an outstanding run for a deserved gold with a time of 1hr 10min 39sec. Steadman came fourth in the run and finished in 1:11:43 France’s Gwladys Lemoussu won bronze, while Britain’s Faye McClelland finished fourth.
Norman was missing her left leg below the knee as the result of congenital constriction band syndrome and was fitted with her first prosthetic limb at the age of one. Running is her speciality, however, and she completed that crucial third act in 20min 15sec.
After a few days of mild weather in Rio, the sun was out in force. An exhausted Steadman admitted she wilted in the oppressive heat but she could still hold her head high.
