Dimitri Coutya took home four medals from Tokyo 2020, and he is the current number one in the world in Cat B Foil. He is a three time world champion, a four time European champion, and is expected to play a major role at Paris 2024. He spoke to Karim Bashir for The Sword in 2023.
I was a pretty active kid and tried all sorts of sports. I did swimming, tennis and basketball. In fact I did basketball for seven years, going every Saturday which was great. I think it’s important for kids to be healthy and active. It was incredibly useful in terms of rehab as well, getting used to growing up in a wheelchair.
I don’t mind speaking about my injury. It’s different and a challenge but the truth is that there are very few things that I can’t do. I can do this and that and I can be an elite athlete. It’s just that I have to do it in a slightly different way. People expect certain negative things but I don’t see it that way. Of course it’s horrible and you wouldn’t wish it on anyone but you wouldn’t wish any of the problems that other people have to deal with on them. It’s just something that we do.
The whole Paralympic aspiration began for me when we had Ade Adepitan (2004 Paralympic bronze medallist in wheelchair basketball) come and train with us at the Aspire Centre in Stanmore. I remember seeing him move up and down the court with the ball and it looked so graceful. I remember thinking ‘I want to be as good as he is at something’. I didn’t know what that was at that point. It was just about being as good as he was at something.
I found fencing when I went to a summer camp at the end of primary school and continued it as a games option in my secondary school. On reflection back then I loved the nature of the sport, the individuality and dynamic. People often ask me why I got into it and the reason is pretty simple – I thought swords were cool. I liked all the films with good sword fighting scenes in them. As anyone who has a similar interest will tell you, it’s not like the films at all.
After getting over that initial disappointment, pretty quickly, I realised that it was an incredible thing. So I started doing it once a week, quickly building to twice and then three times. It progressed until eventually I did my first UK School Games in 2011 and got spotted by Baldip Sahota. From there, I started to train with the squad that were competing at London 2012 and that’s where the inspiration grew to try and qualify for a Paralympics. That’s when things changed from doing a multitude of sports as a hobby and starting to commit to one that I felt more passionate about.
I can only speak from my own experience of that one school club working with John Sloman for many years. He taught me so much of what I know. It was kind of like a process of discovery almost. What I think the key was, was that willingness to learn and to experience new things. That’s what really helped with my development and that’s what is key not only to para elite athletes but able-bodied athletes as well. The availability of kit is a problem but that willingness to learn and understand new things is so important. It’s looking at what you have and saying ‘how do I make a great fencer in these circumstances?’
Back when I started it was really interesting. The coaches at the school where I started were absolutely brilliant but they hadn’t had a lot of experience of wheelchair fencing. But putting aside the footwork it’s almost exactly the same as able-bodied fencing in terms of the technique and tactics as well. The only difference is that you don’t have a fourteen metre piste to work with.
Where able-bodied fencers are relatively rigid in their torso especially in a lunge, with para fencing you need more flexibility in the trunk area. That’s where we generate our changes of distance. In terms of point down, arm first and learning the basic moves – disengages, cut-overs, beats, parries – it’s all pretty much the same thing. Once you start using them and fencing more people in a chair then you learn how to bring in the tactical side. And I’m still learning every day. It’s about when and how to use the moves you’ve learnt. Perhaps there are a couple of nuances when it comes to wheelchair fencing. It’s almost like able-bodied fencing but condensed down to a shorter space.
I’m quite an offensive fencer with foil being my primary weapon. However, I have seen a lot of personal development from a more holistic approach to the sport. The actual fencing bit is just one part. There’s the technical ability and the tactics, the use of distance and movement. Those are the three parts that you can break the actual fencing down into but then the psychological aspects are so important, especially at the huge competitions. There are plenty of elite fencers who have a fantastic game but they crumble on the big day.
For me, all of that ability to fence is useless unless you can use it and control it. Now, I try not to focus too much on my strengths but try to problem-solve in the moment. That part of my fencing developed quite late but that’s the bit I enjoy – trying to respond to what my opponent is doing. That’s the part I’m working on getting stronger at because it doesn’t then matter if you’re fencing someone for the first time or fencing someone you’ve fenced a thousand times. That ability to adapt in the moment is so important to me. In terms of the training, we do lots of sparring through the day plus some gym work and cardio work. What we work on day-to-day depends where we are in the season. I tend to split my time equally between my two weapons and a lot of the training is universal. There can be long days depending on where we are in the cycle.
We’re committed to the wider success of fencing individually and as a team. So we want to see each other do the best that we can be doing. There’s no rivalry in that sense. We work together to raise the profile of the sport in general. On that, we’ve done a lot of work to make our squad as robust as it can be. We’ve worked together for a long time and have a lot of experience that we can pass on, about what it takes to become an elite athlete. It’s grown organically because of the people we are but everything is done with deliberate practice to ensure consistent results and performance. Things are good right now in terms of the squad but at grassroots I just don’t know. We need to improve the communications so that someone trying the sport in isolation could join us for a weekend of training, for example.
In my experience, humour is a huge mechanism in keeping things running smoothly and helping us cope with things as well. If you can joke about something, you can talk about it, assimilate it and work your way through it so that you can give the best performance that you can. It’s an important factor in ensuring that we can do what we’re trying to do.”
We don’t much time to ourselves when we travel. Of course we’re away to do a job and I find sightseeing quite tiring so I’m always looking for the next rest day. We had a couple of days in Rio after the Paralympics and that was amazing. We went up Sugar Loaf Mountain at night and saw the city and Christ The Redeemer. Amazing, and doing that in person will stay with me for ever. It was spectacular.
After Paris? I don’t know, is the honest answer. Fencing has given me so much in my life. It’s given me some of my biggest life lessons. That process of understanding myself so I can get the best out of myself has been huge. After Paris it’s a question of what do I want to get out of another cycle? We always aim for medals and that’s my biggest goal at the moment. I would love to be individual Paralympic Champion as well as team Champion but that’s just the outcome, the end goal. There’s so much more we learn and gain from the journey to that goal.
The way I’m taking it is one Games at a time. I can’t predict how I’m going to feel about myself or about fencing until Paris has happened. Anyone that has done this knows it’s a really unique job. Like with anything there’s trials and challenges and bits that you absolutely despise about it. But in all honesty I can say that I’m quite lucky for being able to live and experience something that I enjoy so much and for what it provides me. I’ve thought a bit about what I’ll do when I finish fencing and I’ve got a couple of ideas.
The thing is we spend all week thinking and planning, that in my downtime I prefer to just relax. I quite like the idea of studying to be a counsellor. I’m trying to get more consistent with my guitar playing so there might be something in that but it’s all up in the air at the moment. It’s just hard to plan ahead when you’re doing what I’m doing.
The mission is simply to aim for gold medal standard consistently. That is essentially what my life will be structured around.
It’s about committing to the grind every day to qualify for Paris. There are so many people who have helped me along the way that I don’t want to mention names in case I miss anyone out. They are all so important to me and have contributed to the amazing life and success I’ve had. I just want to thank them all. ⚔️