Rachael Latham is a former Paralympic swimmer who won medals at the Swimming World Cup and Swimming World Championships as well as competing at the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing. Rachael was first selected to swim for Great Britain at the age of 15 and held World Records for the 200m and 50m Butterfly in her teenage years.

the early years

During childbirth I stopped breathing. To save my life, or at least to kind of reduce any permanent brain damage, the doctors forcibly pulled me out by my left shoulder, which dislocated it and caused nerve damage in the network of nerves that send messages from your spine to your shoulder, arm and hand. And because all those nerves were damaged, basically from the day I was born, I was left with limited use of my left arm. So when I learned to swim, I discovered that the quickest way for me to get from one end of the pool to the other was to keep my left arm by my side, and just use my right – and that’s what I did throughout my swimming career.

Between the ages of four and eleven, I was in and out of Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool a lot, I had a total of five operations I think. I had my tendons twisted, a metal rod put in – and later removed – and other work done to improve the use of my left arm and hand. Although there was talk of having more operations, at 11 years old, we realised that there probably wasn’t going to be any more major improvements, so I decided not to have any further operations.

I think that anyone who has spent any time in hospital., or is still spending time in hospital, may be able to relate to this, but it just becomes part of your norm. I didn't really know any different than going to appointments and check-ups and being in and out of operations and hospital stays. It was all my norm. Obviously post-surgery there was the pain and the things that you go through to make the surgery worthwhile with the physios and everything and that kind of post-surgery slog.  But because I'd been through it from such a young age, it had literally become my everyday life for me. In many ways children and young people are very resilient.

There were of course times when I woke up in the middle of the night and I'd be pressing the buzzer because I wanted my mum to be there. She was always staying locally within the hospital or sometimes in a camp bed on my floor, and she was always there. But I do remember pressing the buzzer one time, waking up in the middle of the night from an operation that happened that day and just having this overwhelming sense of not only pain, but panic that I was on my own and this didn't feel okay and why was this happening to me?

Now I can look back and hopefully I can reassure anybody that's in hospital now to say it is okay to feel unhappy sometimes. It is okay to think ‘why me’ and wish your life was a little bit different and it is fine to have all those feelings.

My other big coping mechanism which went on to change my life was exercise. It was not just good for me to be able to keep fit and healthy but it was also really good for my mind too.

I was really lucky that my parents helped me to take any opportunity that came my way that was going to hopefully give me the best outcomes. Anything that came up whether it be anything from piano through to gymnastics through to swimming, I gave it a go. My parents always encouraged me to ‘just give it a go Rachel!’ And so there were all sorts of things I tried, I went to athletics, running clubs as well and but ultimately, I always came back to swimming. A lot of that was just because that's what I enjoyed the most. I still stand by that now, if you can find something that you can spend your time doing that is going to make you smile and you are going to have fun doing it, do more of it.

Handstands

I have a very strong memory of being six years old in the playground and one of the girls saying ‘let's all go and do handstands, see who can stay up the longest’ and I remember saying, ‘I can't do that’. And one of the other girls who was a very close friend of mine, just said ‘can we do something else? Because Rachel can't do handstands.’ And this friend is still a friend of mine now, you learn that people that are like this, you keep them close. But this other girl insisted on doing the handstands and my friend said, well, if Rachel can't do it, then me and Rachel will go and find something else to do and if anyone would like to come along, that's fine. And a few of the other girls came and we all went and did something else.

And later on in high school there was a girl who in the corridors would always say ‘Rachel, give me a high ten’ and of course because I can’t lift one arm, I couldn’t do that. And they're just little things, but they do stick with you. But then you look back and realise they are small things and you remind yourself that the people that make you feel that way, they're not in your team, they are not part of your close knit circle, so don't worry about them, push them to the back of your mind and think, ‘I am a little bit different but that is okay.’

With swimming, I'm just swimming like everybody else, I just do it with one arm. People who write with their left hand instead of their right hand, they're still writing. We're all still doing it. We're just doing it in a different way. And that is OK. And the world gets so caught up with us all doing things in a particular way. And if you don't do it like 95% of the people do it, you're doing it wrong and you can get picked on for it. But trying to dig deep and pull those positive thoughts out will help and keep reminding yourself that it is okay to adapt anything in life if you need to.

Beating my sister at swimming

From a young age and throughout primary school I was trying out all these sorts of sports, but by the time I got to 11,  I had decided it was swimming that I wanted to do more of. I had this feeling that I wanted to excel in swimming. I wanted to try and be the best. And a lot of that actually came from the fact that my sister was a good swimmer, and she was probably my first ever role model because I looked at her and I thought, I not only want to be a good swimmer like her, I want to be better than her!

That was kind of my drive in my early years. There's a lot of talk about role models throughout life and often we think it has to be somebody you might see on television or on Instagram that we want to try and be like or strive to achieve as much as they have. But it can just be the person you are sat next to right now ,or somebody in your own home or in the classroom and for me that was my sister.

Being discharged from Alder Hey and starting my disability swimming journey overlapped very nicely, and actually swimming was the only sport that I did where I was taken to a disability environment. I was going to Wigan Swimming Club but my Mum thought this wasn't really fair because I was competing against people who have a whole extra limb than me! So she rang up the regional disability swimming coach in the Northwest and said, ‘my daughter is a good swimmer, she's getting into it and she's already at a club, but I would like her to kind of not only have some specialised coaching for somebody who knows how to improve a one armed swimmer, but also allow her to race against people that are on a level playing field.’

And that's basically where my swimming journey began because I wanted to win medals but I wanted to be able to do it in in a fair way.

Swimming, school and a social life

But I realised I could gain that social element within my sport, I still had great friends at school and in other areas of life and I also had a large family, but the people I met in swimming, even on that very first day when I walked on poolside and seeing all these other people that have different bodies like myself, I thought ‘this is so cool, this is where I belong, everybody I meet can relate to me and can empathise with me.’ We all are a little bit different and that allowed me to build my confidence and feel less insecure.

I'm obviously not saying everybody who's been to Alder Hey hospital or who has a disability should go off and find disability competitions to build your confidence and love yourself more, because not everybody wants to and not everybody likes sport. But if you can find a community that gives you that feeling, then embrace it. And for me personally, that community was disability swimming.

The first thing I gained from swiming was the people and friendship, and after that came the sport and the medals and the journey of working your way up, but it was hard to fit it all in.

I had to train from five till seven before school because that's the only time the pools are open before the public get in. And then you're going to go to school all day and then you are going to go away and do your homework, have some food and you got to go back to the pool again in the evening. But I think you just get on with it. Because it's something that was so important to me and ultimately, I enjoyed it. I wanted to do it. it put a smile on my face. I wouldn't have gone through this process if it didn't. But it did make me happy. So I was willing to get up early in the morning and go to school all day and then train again in the evening. When you add up those hours, it was 24 hours a week of exercise plus education. And it was a lot, but it was a gradual increase in what I needed to do to try and ultimately become the best one-armed swimmer in the world. And on those days where the alarm went off and I didn't want to get out of bed, I'd think, well, I bet that Chinese girl with one arm is training this morning or I bet that American with one arm is training this morning. So I’d better get my backside out of bed and get to the pool.

Challenges

You have your different challenges as a disability swimmer. I had my challenges in that I had to find a coach that was going to be good enough to get me there. There are loads of swimming coaches around, but how many are specialist one armed swimming coaches? That’s a challenge right there. Another challenge is the mental barrier and your thoughts on your own body, which is different to how an able-bodied person would feel. For me, I actually feel very fortunate that my disability was from birth, so I didn't acquire my disability later on in life. So, everything I had known was as a one arm swimmer or a person who has limited use of my left arm and I don't know any difference.

If you acquire a disability later on in life, that can change, but ultimately anybody with a disability is going to come across more hurdles around confidence, believing in yourself, finding role models, being able to find somebody that you can look to and realise they’re the same as me and think ‘I want to achieve what they're doing.’

But those traits of resilience and of perseverance and determination, all those things that I learned at Alder Hey to get through my operations, those traits are the things that actually are also helping me through this process as an adult swimmer, and I think that is the case with a lot of people with disabilities. Pretty much every person with a disability, they will have had to adapt. They will have to have found ways to do things that the average able-bodied person never has to do. They need to be more resilient because the world is not made for them. You have to be more determined because you have to put more effort into doing things than a lot of other people have to do. Those are the things that will interfere with the process. But if you can go, say it’s no big deal, and I will rise above it, then that's what makes you stronger and that's what makes you say ‘I'm still going to achieve regardless of my disability.’ It's not what you can't do, it's what you can do.

The Paralympics

There is absolutely nothing better in the world than achieving something that you have put all your time and effort into. And turning round to see the look on the faces of the people in your team that helped you get there as well, knowing that my mum and dad are going to be really happy and my coach, who's been on poolside every morning supporting me, that was for him too.

It's the same as when you don't achieve, you think they’re going to be really disappointed in me or you think you should have been able to do better for them. You have gone through so much with so many people that the overwhelming emotion of when you do achieve something is so unbelievably high. And that's the reason why people go on to do more and more. It's the feeling you get when you do achieve and whether that is the first time that you swim a personal best, or the first time that you complete something or the first time that you get a gold medal round your neck, anything that is that feeling of, wow, that was all worth it. I want to do more, and I want to do it again. And those were those things that pushed me through the hard times.

And there were hard times, I absolutely did not get everything given to me on a plate. I missed out on the Paralympics at my first trials, but I won through at the second attempt and that was the difference between me sitting at home and watching on TV. And the team and friends that I'd made over the years, watching them fly out, compete with their country, get their shiny kit, or me being there with them. That all went into me getting selected the second time. That's a big mental challenge to come back from because you think I'm just not good enough, maybe I shouldn't be here. And then you think, no, this is what makes me happy, I have a great team around me that are going to help me get there. I'm not giving up. I'm going to keep going. I remember that feeling of when I did get selected for Great Britain, I'm going to go again. And then two years after missing out at trials I went to the World Championships at 17 years old and I won a silver and bronze medal there and I went to World Cups and became European champion and everything was great. I was so glad I didn't quit when I missed out by a second.

And you know that there are still ups and downs. Unfortunately, I injured the one arm that I swim with. I pulled the muscle down the back of my tricep and underneath my scapula and they operated on it just before I went out to Beijing for my first Paralympic Games.

I had three Chinese girls in my final of the 100 metre butterfly, so the place was packed and the experience was unbelievable, the crowd was amazing. You realise you've really achieved something special and all those hours of early mornings and missing out on friend's birthday parties were worth it. But because of that injury I didn't win the medal that everyone expected me to win.  I just wasn't fit or strong enough at that moment in time to be the best in the world. And I got out of that pool, and I knew it was still all worth it, I wanted to do more. And I came home from those games intent to carry on but unfortunately my right arm just got worse and worse.

And I was told that if I continued training with one arm 24 hours a week, I was going to end up with limited use of your right arm, just like your left.