A man who woke up paralysed is "absolutely buzzing" after winning gold at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
With just 200m to go, Nathan Maguire "felt the electric buzz around the stadium", hearing a "wall of noise" as he pulled out to overtake the two competitors ahead of him and win gold in the men's T53/54 1500m wheelchair race. The 25-year-old Liverpool John Moores University graduate told the ECHO: "It pushed me all the way through the line and I just knew I could do it for England, I could do it for all the disabled kids at home, and I could do it for my family."
Nathan, who lives in Elton near Ellesmere Port, "never looked back" when he got into a race chair after a spinal cord injury left him paralysed overnight. When he was eight, Nathan had transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord that, according to the NHS, causes the body's immune system to attack the outside layer of nerves in the spine.
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He said: "It is very scary, but it was probably more scary for my parents than it was for me. Eight years old, you just kind of get on with it. I was in intensive care for three weeks and then I got given a wheelchair. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, I thought it was amazing. I'd been in bed for three weeks, so just the opportunity to be free and be independent again was incredible."
Nathan was discharged from hospital that Christmas Eve, and by January 5, he was playing basketball thanks to the "driving force" of his sporty dad. At that first basketball session, coached by a Paralympic athlete, Nathan declared his desire "to go to the Paralympics one day".
Always an athletic kid who grew up with a ball in his hand, Nathan also tried swimming, rowing and waterskiing before settling on wheelchair racing at Greenbank Sports Academy by Sefton Park when he was 15. Nathan, who went to Helsby High School, said: "I just loved it - it was the start of my new life, it was the start of my disabled life, and the start of my sporting career."
The 25-year-old added: "For me, sport was a way of me not feeling different. Sport was a way of me fitting in. I went to a high school that had 1,600 pupils and only one person looked like me, whereas when I went on a basketball court, there were 30 people at the basketball session and everybody looked like me."
Wheelchair racing gave Nathan an extra sense of freedom because it all came down to him and his own training and ability. He said: "As a wheelchair user, you get quite mollycoddled - as a disabled person, you do as well. But I had a shift when I got a race chair. People tell you to go faster rather than slower. People tell you to go as quick as you can. It's just that sense of freedom that you don't have to rely on anybody else - it's all down to you."
Nathan does eight training sessions over six days each week with Kirkby Athletics Club and at Greenbank Sports Academy, where he used to volunteer. He throws up from nerves before every race, but that hasn't stopped him from winning three bronze medals at the European Para Athletics Championship in Berlin in 2018. He also won gold and set a new world record as part of the 4x100m universal relay team at the competition.
He went on to set a European record in 2020 when he and his teammates won silver in the mixed 4x100m universal relay at the Tokyo Paralympics, "the pinnacle of our sport". Nathan said: "To say I've been to two Paralympics and I'm now a Commonwealth Games champion, it's just incredible. It's a childhood dream culminating and I've finally got that goal, but I'm looking to hopefully get a gold in Paris 2024 as well."
Outside of sports, Nathan works with Panathlon, a charity running multisport events and going into schools to give kids with disabilities a chance to take part in competitive sports. Nathan believes this is important because he never got those opportunities, instead having to travel to Manchester Mavericks for basketball, Ellesmere Port for swimming, and Runcorn for rowing.
Nathan said: "They're the next generation of Paralympians and they're 10 steps ahead of me because they got those opportunities, so it's really exciting to see where the sport and where the Paralympic movement could go in the next 10 or 15 years."
He added: "Take every opportunity you possibly can. That's how I got into it. You don't have to be the next Olympian or Paralympian - you can just enjoy your sport. I tried so much because I was enjoying sport and I was just having fun, and then I found my niche from there and that's how I became a Commonwealth Games champion. I just tried everything, took every opportunity and enjoyed it."
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