Jimmy Goddard on the road

Jimmy Goddard won the 2009 British Paratriathlon Championships in the Tri 3 category for wheelchair athletes with full use of their arms. Here he talks about his love of triathlon, rigorous training regime and future ambitions.

 

Jimmy Goddard has always loved sport. He played rugby at school and did his first triathlon around 10 years ago. His attraction to physical challenges and an outdoor life led him through Sandhurst to the Royal Artillery and a promising military career.

But all that changed in 2004 following a climbing accident, which left him paralysed from the chest down.

“One of the first things I did on leaving hospital in 2005 was to enter the London Triathlon. I was just determined to carry on,” he says.

Jimmy completed the event in his day wheelchair rather than the sleek racing chair he uses today but he still rates it as his best ever race. “Preparing for London was a huge motivating factor during my recovery.”

Since then Jimmy has raced hand cycles in Europe, become a member of Kingston Velocity wheelchair racing club, cycle toured in New Zealand and scaled Mount Kilimanjaro. But he keeps returning to triathlon.

“Triathlon is a wonderfully inclusive sport and very welcoming to paratriathletes,” he explains. “It’s amazing what British Triathlon has done to integrate disabled athletes.”

Wheelchair users complete the bike section on a hand cycle, a geared tricycle driven by rotating the arms. They then switch to a racing chair for the final stretch. These are low-slung aerodynamic machines propelled by slapping the wheel rims with gloved hands.

“Wheelchair racing requires a lot of skill and practice,” says Jimmy. “Not only do you need to be fit to maintain speed, you have to have great coordination. It took me years to learn.”

The other problem is that the movement is very different to hand cycling and the switch from one to the other leaves Jimmy with “jelly arms.”

But surely it’s swimming that presents the greatest barrier to wheelchair users?

“It was definitely a struggle to start with,” says Jimmy. “Kicking maintains your position in the water and I kept flipping over onto my back when I first returned to the water. In fact I had to do double-arm backstroke to begin with, but I still loved as much as I did before.”

Open water swimming suits him best because he doesn’t have to push off a wall every 25m and he has the additional buoyancy from the wetsuit.

Hard training

Jimmy trains six days per week and usually limits himself to one session per day. “All my events are upper body, so I have to make sure I include adequate rest time. It’s all about finding the optimum balance between work and recovery.”

He also tends to rotate his focus sport so that he’ll spend a few weeks concentrating on swimming, for example, while just keeping the others ticking over.

Keeping motivated is simple. “80 per cent of the time I really enjoy training and I look forward to it. The rest is routine and going through the motions. My real problem is endurance rides, which I find a drag, so I normally break them down into a series of longish reps. I like the endorphin high I get from cycling hard and fast.”

Jimmy admits fitting it all in as a bit of a juggling act. “Everything takes longer when you’re a wheelchair user. You can’t just randomly squeeze a training session into your day. It’s all about planning.”

He’s managed pretty well over the last few years while he’s been a sports science student at Loughborough. “I start working in September. We’ll have to see how that pans out with training.”

In any case, he’s determined to carry on and is looking forward to 2016 when triathlon should become a Paralympic sport.

Jimmy encourages anyone to take up triathlon. “Triathlon is a great sport. Don’t worry too much about the obstacles – the expensive kit and the need for support – there are always plenty of people to help at a race and you can cobble together what you need quite easily once you start asking.”

He does confess however that good quality racing kit becomes very desirable as you improve and want to be more competitive. “Fortunately, there are several funding opportunities you can pursue, and I’m extremely grateful to Belvoir Property Management who sponsor my racing.”

As for the races, clearly some are more accessible than others. Events at Dorney Lake score highly. “The car-free smooth tarmac makes it the perfect venue for wheelchair athletes,” says Jimmy.

Race organisers are required to take reasonable steps to insure their events are inclusive. Often it only takes some thought and consideration rather than large-scale changes. Jimmy has a straightforward way to assess an event. “I like to turn up and race without feeling like I’m tying up someone else’s time or impacting on anyone else.”

Most race organisers seem to be getting it right. “Sometimes I’ll enter an event without advising the organisers of my needs but it’s never been a problem.”

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