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My name’s Tanni Grey-Thompson. I’m a Paralympian. I competed at five Paralympic Games and competed
in 16 London Marathons. And when I retired 4 years ago I became a Director of the London
Marathon. So... I’m here today partly with my Directors hat on, just nice to see we’ve
got Development Days linked to the Mini-Marathon. But also as a retired athlete just to see
what the youngsters are doing and who’s new. And we’ve had a few guys who’ve graduated
from the Mini-Marathon to the full Marathon and we’re hoping by having events like this
that we’ll get a lot more of that happening. I think it’s amazing the Olympics and Paralympics
are coming to London as part of the big process. Right at the beginning where everyone said
we shouldn’t bother because nobody thought we were going to win. And then just gradually
over time more and more people thought that we could do it. And for that moment in Singapore
when Jacques Rogge said London it was one of the most emotional experiences of my entire
life. I was sitting next to Seb Coe. Neither of us could pick up our glass of water because
our hands were shaking so much. And it’s probably the biggest high I’ve ever had
in my career. Because it was such a huge team effort. And then from being in and around
Stratford and trying to picture what the venues and the village would look like... back in
2005 it was almost impossible. But I think it’s going to do a lot of good- it’ll
be great for the country. I think it’s great for that area of London. But also I think
it just shows the rest of the world that were pretty good at organising things, and we can
do it. The Olympics’ll be great because the Olympics are always great. But the Paralympics
will just be such a step- change from anything we’ve seen before. So I’m hugely excited
about it. In sport it’s really hard to define talent
because sometimes you see somebody and in their first training session in a chair you
think they have talent. You see something about them- whether it’s the way they push
or they sit or sometimes their attitude- that you can see just something in a young athlete’s
eyes that you think ‘OK, if they work hard and they focus they can achieve something
special’. Sometimes talent takes a long time to come out. Sometimes it takes a couple
of years of training to identify someone as having talent. But for me it’s a few things.
It’s having some natural ability, but I think it’s also having that will to train.
That will to focus everything that you want to do on being the best that you can.