Born with a rare congenital disorder that affected all his limbs, diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma at the age of seven, a Paralympic champion at the age of 28. No wonder Will Bayley climbed on the table to lap up the acclaim after winning class 7 table tennis gold for ParalympicsGB, keeping his nerve in a feisty final that occasionally threatened to boil over into a fully blown row.
When Israel Pereira Stroh’s final shot flew long, to the disappointment of a partisan home crowd who travelled to Pavilion 3 in Rio Centro anticipating a Brazilian coronation, Bayley’s first reaction was something akin to an out-of-body experience. There he was with his hands in the air and a big grin on his face, a showman who was beginning to feel a bit silly.
“I didn’t plan anything,” he said. “I thought I had to do something special. It was probably rubbish. But I just decided to get on the table and do something stupid like hold something up in the air. I’ve never done that before. If I did it now I probably wouldn’t be able to get on the table. But it was the adrenaline that helped me jump. A couple of seconds later I thought ‘this is stupid’ but I’ve got to blag it and put my hands in the air.”
Bayley felt as if he was walking on air even after clambering back to the floor. He leapt on the shoulders of his jubilant Slovenian coach, Gorazd Vecko, who briefly looked as if he might drop his champion. Unamused by his antics, the Chinese umpire gave Bayley a yellow card. They had spent most of the match arguing about the legality of Bayley’s service action. He hugged her. “She didn’t like me very much,” Bayley said. “She was uptight and I wanted to calm her down. I don’t think she wanted me to win.”
Four years after defeat by Germany’s Jochen Wollmert in the final in London, Bayley beat Pereira Stroh 11-9, 5-11, 11-9, 11-4. “When I first came into the team, GB were laughed off the table,” he said. “The Chinese and Ukrainians thought, ‘These guys are muppets, they’ll never do anything’. But we’ve conquered. We’ve got lion hearts.”
It was as much a mental battle as a test of skill. Pereira Stroh, a 30-year-old who was born with cerebral palsy, tried to get inside Bayley’s head by claiming his ball toss was too high and the British player regularly clashed with the officials. He was in danger of imploding for a while, especially after losing the second set. It was like watching Andy Murray in his worst moments.
Rafa Nadal is Bayley’s favourite athlete but the world No1 was having trouble with this lefty, who won by three sets to one when they met in the group stage.
“I knew if I got on top of him that he was going to question my serves,” Bayley said. “He lost the first set and the first thing he said was to question my serves. I had a quick word back in his ear to say, ‘Your serves are questionable; we can both talk about serves.’
“I spoke to my psychologist the day before and he said try not to get emotional if he does that. It’s difficult in the heat of the moment. I lost my head a little bit. But I pulled it back round.”
The turning point came when Bayley, who was on the ropes midway through the third set, accidentally tripped Pereira Stroh when they were reaching for their towels. After an uneasy couple of seconds, they embraced before talking tactics with their coaches. But the Brazilian, whose silver medal earned him a huge roar of appreciation from the locals, was rattled.
Vecko, who lived with Bayley for three years, told him to calm down, focus on the match and forget about the umpire. A calmness swept over Bayley.
Pereira Stroh, who works as a journalist, started to make errors and Bayley had a set point after a fortunate net cord. He took it and ran away with the fourth set, using his heavily tattooed right arm to devastating effect.
Born with arthrogryposis, Bayley went to Great Ormond Street Hospital for numerous operations on his arms and legs as a baby. He returned for chemotherapy after being diagnosed with cancer. That was when his grandmother bought him a table tennis set. What did she know?
Pereira Stroh towered over Bayley but he has always been a scrappy little fighter. He was written off after being moved from Class 6 to Class 7 in 2007. “When I first got reclassified I was too disabled to play in that class,” he said. “But you never write Will Bayley off.”
