Wheelchair fencer Oliver Lam-Watson qualified for his second Paralympic Games in June 2024, after competing and winning two team medals at Tokyo 2020.
“What’s different about Paris to Tokyo? God, everything, I guess, and also nothing at the same time. There’s gonna be a crowd this time. We didn’t have that in Tokyo. There’s almost no time difference. It almost feels like we’re at home. We’re only an hour away. We’re going to be in this amazing venue. And you know, we’re going to prepare ourselves to feel comfortable in any situation, absolutely.”
The first World Cup competition of this Paris Paralympic qualification cycle presented a stark choice for Paralympian Oliver Lam-Watson. As he was getting geared up putting his sights on being able to fight, yet again, for medals at another Games to continue GBR success, his mother Tessa lay dying.
“Mum loved what I did and it was her dream to be with me in Paris for the 2024 Games. But I had to leave her on her deathbed to go to the first qualification event in Hungary. It was a tough start on my road to Paris. I had given everything in the run-up to Tokyo. I wanted to have the same sort of journey for France. I had to recalibrate and ask myself ‘what am I able to sacrifice? How much is too much?’ But then, when people tell me that I am giving above and beyond, I reply ‘How much do you want it?’ So it’s been a really hard cycle. She almost passed away on the first on the day of the first competition for qualifications.”
“It’s been one of the most difficult times of my life. She was so excited to hopefully be in Paris with me, because she couldn’t be there in Tokyo. And she said, I want to be in Paris, I want to watch you fence. So to be qualified, bring that dream to life, you know, and go there and compete, for me is has been the biggest thing that’s changed. Obviously, there have been small things here and there. I’ve been up for my training. I’ve been giving this everything. I sacrificed the last moments I had with my mother to qualify for this. So for me, this means everything.”
Ollie reports that his dual state of grief alongside his mission to realise his athletic aims literally split him in half. At a subsequent Paralympic qualifying World Cup in Korea, he made two quarter-final placings, meaning he achieved his highest-ever world ranking of 7th. “In those kinds of moments, I bounce between the two of me. It was very sad Mum wasn’t alive to witness it. My line gets blurred as to whether I am doing it for myself or for her. The goal is one but there are two people trying to achieve it – the son and the athlete.”
“When I say my fencing meant everything to Mum, it really did. It was her way of living her dream. Her own dad had become the Hong Kong national team doctor and then later on me doing sport at a top level gave her such happiness, as well as a sense of family honour. She delighted in seeing how her dream was being lived through the generations as both a mother and a daughter.”
Before the World Cup on home soil in Cardiff, the attitude was in place: “We sent a team member ahead to the Welsh Open to do a recce so we can hit the ground running. We want to dominate the area, own the space. This is our territory, our World Cup, in our yard. Anywhere we go as a team, we are fierce so we’re always delighted to be on home soil, feeling the fencing piste and asserting that to people.”
Two of the doctors that Ollie had consulted on his condition. known as Klippel-Trenaunay syndrome, prove that people are more likely to be disabled by society than their medical condition. One doctor told him that he would never walk or run properly nor ever be an athlete. So, Ollie took up Spartan races which are a series of challenging obstacle courses. On hearing of his efforts, the other doctor said “Well that’s not really a sport, is it?”
Ollie went back to the drawing board. He methodically scoured the internet, going through each Paralympic discipline and eventually hit upon wheelchair fencing. That was 2017 – the rest is history. But history is not compiled from pre-existing facts. It is an interplay between grit, graft and guts.
“Humankind has been through fifty million years of biological progression but that doesn’t mean that anyone naturally evolves into being gifted at wheelchair fencing. I have worked hard to be that person. I have been willing to sacrifice everything for this goal.”
Ollie, a trained architect, confesses to having an analytical brain in a body that houses a titan. What might be regarded as an initial biological ‘coding error’ has been re-harnessed and used by this disability advocate to recode and rewrite into a powerful programme of success and self-actualisation.
“One part of me is responsible for going to sleep, getting up and putting in the hours at training. Then I get on piste. The force inside me is let loose. The harder you can push, fight and apply yourself, the more you are forging your inner animal – the inner machine. It’s not you as a person; it’s THAT. That’s the energy which then does all the work and fights to win.”
Ollie directs his laser-focus outwards as well as inwards. “My journey – my road to Paris – can be summed up in one sentence. ‘Why not you? Why would you not be here? Why could you not do what I have done?’ We all strive to move on from different adversities and challenges for different reasons but with one common thing in mind: there is nothing stopping us.”
The future after the Games is as yet uncertain. “Oh, that’s the question everybody’s asking. How long am I going to continue in fencing? I don’t know. I’m not always one to ride until the wheels fall off. I love fencing. It’s giving me a lot, but I don’t know where I’m going to be in five years, two years, three years, or if I’m even going to be here, you know. So I try to take things one day at a time, logistically. I know you can’t do that, so maybe three days at a time [laughs].”
“At the moment, I’m here, this is the goal that I’m chasing. Let’s see what happens. As long as I’m creating something, I find myself in position where I’m able to create interesting things and media that makes people think I see fencing and and this story as as a media of its own, which I love. So I love telling this story at the moment.”
“To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die”, said the poet Thomas Campbell. Tessa Lam Dessoky has already been accompanying her son on his road trip, and hopefully they will make it to their destination. What was once a journey beyond disability has become a voyage of such gravitational force that Ollie cannot help but stick to the coordinates: “Going to Paris is how I will honour my mother’s legacy; I’ll do that by bringing her dream to life.” ⚔️
SIÂN HUGHES POLLITT
Additional material by BF staff