Three years ago Steve Bate set himself a target. But instead of obsessing about the colour of the medal he was aiming for in Rio de Janeiro, an athlete who had only recently taken up cycling had a more realistic goal. He just wanted to make it to the Paralympic Games in the first place and then, well, who knows what comes next? “Life will go on if I win medals or if I don’t,” Bate says.
The first thing you need to know about Bate is that when he puts his mind to something he tends to make a success of it. He might have been a cycling novice but it soon became apparent that he was a natural on a bike and Bate, whose stringent training regime means he will have little time to celebrate turning 39 on Wednesday, will head to Rio with a strong chance of collecting gold alongside his pilot, Adam Duggleby, with whom he won the time trial in the UCI Para-cycling Road World Cup last year. Together they will race in 4km tandem pursuit (B/VI), the time trial and the road race.
“It’s actually going to happen, which is amazing,” Bate says. “There’s a bit of excitement and a bit of worry.” But not as much as when he decided that he was going to become the first visually impaired person to solo climb El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in 2012, a year after he had been diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa, a disease that has robbed him of his peripheral vision.
It came out of the blue. There was no family history of the disease, nothing to tell Bate that it was on the way. He estimates that his vision is either 6% or 7% and likens it to looking through two straws. “When I first got diagnosed they said the worst-case scenario was you could be blind in five years,” Bate says.
“We’re five years on and I’ve still got some vision. When I look at something I can see it. Depth perception, it doesn’t matter. Whatever I look at I focus on and I can’t see anything else outside that little circle. It’s a degenerative disease.
“My vision might be stable for two months or 10 years and then there’ll be a slight decline. I’ve spoken to people with RP who got blind within five years. They see tiny amounts. They’re registered blind, I’m visually impaired. Other people have had RP for 30 years and they can see more than I can. It’s a lottery.
“It’s quite a frightening thing when you get told you could be blind in five years. I must have been borderline depressed because I was really angry. I was pretty fit, I was healthy, I didn’t smoke or drink very much. But you come to terms with it.”
Once he did, he focused on his training and he was ready to tackle the climb in 2013. That determination shines through when he is racing. Indeed the only difference is that Bate was already a climbing fanatic. “I was always a person who liked big adventures, trying to push my body to those limits,” he says. “Climbing El Cap seemed like a perfect opportunity.”
However, there was a lot to learn. “I hated solo rock climbing. I always climbed on a rope. I was very close to not starting because I was so worried about killing myself. I wanted to achieve a dream but wanted to come back off it alive. My wife Caroline was very supportive, she’s a big climber herself. I had her name written on my glove.”
Bate remembers the 45-minute walk up to the start base being the worst of his life. He kept thinking he was going to die. “I couldn’t get that thought out of my mind. It’s not easy to start something with that at the back of your mind. I was shaking so much I had to sit down. I sat there thinking do I really want to do this or have I pushed myself too far? I just took in the scenery, it’s a stunning place.”
He only relaxed when his friend, Andy Kirkpatrick arrived, and said that they needed to start. “That was a knife into the chest,” Bate says. “I had to make a decision. I pulled out my kit. I put some music on. It took me an hour to set up. Soloing is a technical thing, it’s a big faff. But by the time I got started I had a massive smile on my face. Turning round just wasn’t going to be an option. I fell off twice.
“The second one was more scary, I fell quite a way and bashed my elbow and was left hanging upside down. That was a good reminder because no one is coming to rescue you if you hurt yourself bad. I got to the top, sat down and had a cry.
“For six days and nights, you just can’t switch off. You make a mistake and it’s game over. It’s just so mentally draining. You get to the top and it’s just nice to be horizontal again and not vertical. You’re living in a vertical world for six days. You relax and find your eyes just start leaking.”
After the climb, he got on his bike. Now for Rio.
