A couple of years ago, the swimmer and Paralympic gold medallist Alice Tai was talking to The Last Leg presenter Adam Hills about her recent decision to have her right leg amputated to improve her quality of life. Hills had a question for her: why wasn’t anybody filming her story? The result is Amputating Alice, a charming one-off documentary about Tai’s spectacular career to date, her surgery, recovery and eventual return to competitive sport.
Anyone scrolling through the listings may see the title and expect a certain sort of film. However, they will be pleasantly surprised by its jaunty tone and I suspect that a bit of misdirection is the point. The programme is irreverent from the off, as Hills narrates an atmospheric shot of Tai floating in a pool. “Don’t worry, she hasn’t died. But she has just had her leg cut off.” He waits a fraction of a second. “Ironically, though, that’s jumping ahead.” Hills, who has a prosthetic leg himself, meets Tai about halfway through the film, to offer advice and support, but it’s Tai’s story and she is the one who carries it.
Tai, 24, was born with bilateral talipes, or club foot. After many years of walking with crutches, numerous complex and invasive operations, painful rehabilitation and ever-decreasing mobility, she decided to have her right leg amputated below the knee. (“A major step forward,” notes Hill, drily.) The film follows her from the consultation at which the date for the operation is set, through her attempts to be fit enough to compete in the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, just eight months after the surgery.
It tells the story through a combination of sit-down interviews with Tai and her family, friends and coach, self-filmed footage and home movies from Tai’s childhood. Jonnie Peacock, the Paralympian gold medallist, pops up to talk about his experiences. Tai appears to have a very supportive family, from lovely grandparents to her mother, Angie, and father Steve. Just before the op, her friends throw a “Bye-Bye Leg Party” and serenade her limb to the tune of Happy Birthday. Recovering in hospital, she jokes that she’s “absolutely legless”.
This all makes for a very likable subject and a very likable documentary. It provides a great deal of detail on the procedure itself and subsequent rehabilitation, including the prosthesis fitting; Hills offers to be “the Yoda of legs” as he talks her through the small stuff, as well as the big. She has nicknamed her stump Bean, due to its resemblanceto a legume, but there is a significant set-back during a karaoke night out. “I murdered Bean,” she warns, and viewers are, rightly, told that the more squeamish of us may wish to look away for a few moments. Still, Tai is determined to get back to racing, within an increasingly ambitious time-frame.
The documentary hints at depths that are mostly brushed over. Tai comes across as someone unfazed by anything, and she is notably flippant when listing her achievements. “Got an MBE,” she practically shrugs. She won seven gold medals at the World Para Swimming Championships in 2019, making her the overall top athlete. “So that was pretty cool,” she says. But all that breeziness masks insecurity, as she later admits, when she discusses suffering from impostor syndrome, and being unable to believe that she deserves her success.
Recovery is a psychological and physical process, then. As the film moves towards its inspirational end – this has the structure of a classic sports documentary, as is fitting – we see the impact of her decision to amputate and the difference it has made to her quality of life, as well as to her sporting career. She gets back into the pool even before she can have her prosthesis fitted, in an attempt to be fit enough for the Commonwealth Games. She feels a sense of independence and freedom in the water, she says, that she doesn’t always on land.
There is an old joke about Sports Personality of the Year being an oxymoron, but Tai is amiable, personable and, ironically for a swimmer, often very dry. “I’ve lost a bit of weight,” she quips, as we see her for the first time after the operation. There is a bit of chat here about what it means to be a role model, and for Paralympic athletes in particular, who may shoulder more pressure than most.
But largely this is a story of toil and tenacity, told with gusto and humour.
Amputating Alice is on Channel 4.
