Don Elgin doesn’t shake your hand so much as tenderise it. The three-time Australian Paralympic pentathlete is pressing the flesh and promoting his second book when we meet at the MCG, and with a quick vice-grip and enthusiastic introduction one becomes immediately aware of how and why, when discus was added to the schedule of the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, the boundlessly energetic Australian told himself: “I reckon I can do that.”
The handshake is a story itself. When Elgin was born, both his hands were balled into fists, sealed closed by amniotic bands that attached to the end of his fingers and webbed them together. He was 13 years old before each finger had been fully separated and surgically extended to a knuckle-length shorter than those of his three siblings, and that only after doctors took bone from his arm and skin from his legs to virtually create an entire thumb. Elgin was also born without the lower portion of his left leg.
As a child, his greatest frustration with his own plight was that endless numbers of operations left him staring longingly at the pool during summers at the Tocumwal caravan park the Elgin family ran and called home. He says the reason he now sounds like the happiest man alive is that he’s just spent 20 years travelling the world and fulfilling his unlikely sporting dreams; four medals spread across three Paralympic Games, plus four world championship appearances and two World Cups.
Glasgow represented a quite remarkable comeback. Thirty-eight years old and six years retired, inspiration hit Elgin while he was serving as manager of the 2012 London team (“Team managers were put in place because of people like me,” he jokes). The competitive itch had returned. Now he’s an author and motivational speaker, the kind who could probably give motivational speeches to other motivational speakers.
Not all of what came before was a breeze. At Barcelona he was the “13th man” – one spot off selection for the final team. When his “home” Commonwealth Games rolled around in 2006, Elgin was cursed by the limited nature of the schedule. None of his events made the cut, so he filled a spot in the commentary booth instead.
Married with four children, Elgin remained throughout his career aware of the “burden” on his wife and four children as he tried to fund his way around Australia and the world to compete, missing out on family time in the process and sometimes for a disappointing result. “It takes about two and a half seconds to spin around and throw a discus,” he says ruefully. “You don’t want it so much for yourself but the people who’ve supported you. When you fall short of being able to hand them a medal, it hurts a little bit for yourself but you feel like you’ve let people down.”
A topic that is tougher to negotiate for some, though not Elgin himself, is his long-time friendship with Oscar Pistorius, with whom the Australian “connected in a heartbeat” when the South African was 15 and being shunned by over-competitive rivals.
When we discuss the 2013 death of Reeva Steenkamp and Pistorius’ subsequent trials, Elgin is careful to preface his comments respectfully and acknowledge the ordeal endured by the Steenkamp family. “A poor, innocent girl lost her life,” he says.
But he has supported Pistorius throughout, sending him text messages (“I knew I was dealing with a broken man,” he says) over the last four years, and laments what he sees as selective and often objectionable media coverage of the case. Slipping away to his home office at all hours, Elgin watched every minute of the trial and when Pistorious got bail a message of thanks arrived from him to Elgin’s phone.
“Yes I’m a mate, but that aside, as a punter who is interested in this thing...One I know Oscar, and what the prosecution’s intention to do was to paint a villain in him,” Elgin says. At that point he stops himself to acknowledge the importance of a thorough legal process, despite his own misgivings about the way the trial played out. “A family have lost their daughter,” Elgin says. “You know what? I want that prosecution to eat this guy, but if he’s right, at least then I’d be able to sleep going ‘hey, that was an accident.’ If they don’t ask those questions we just say he’s a nice guy and he couldn’t have done it.”
Elgin doesn’t think anybody understands what it’s like to be startled or caught off guard without your legs, as Pistorius was. “When I put my leg on I’m complete,” he says. “You without your glasses, you’re going to second guess yourself. When someone hasn’t got their legs on – so in Oscar’s case, he wakes up in the night and hears a noise – he shits himself. He’s a scaredy cat generally, anyway.”
“I need to be clear: I believe Oscar. I believe him not because he’s a mate but because I watched the trial. His story hasn’t changed. What he said, I listened to, I thought about, and I can understand why you would be in that situation. What we don’t do well as humans...we don’t like the fact that people can make an honest mistake. OK, someone lost their life. That’s a fucking big mistake. But we want blood for mistakes.
“Should he be punished? Sure he should. It was bloody reckless. But was it deliberate intent for murder? I doubt it.”
On the topic of those who’ve followed in his footsteps at Paralympic level, Elgin says he hates stories about how “courageous” he and his fellow athletes are. “That’s bullshit,” he says bluntly. “They’re athletes and they want to be treated as athletes.
“I don’t live a politically correct life,” he adds. “I think society is getting a bit soft.” As if to emphasise the point Elgin recalls that in his early forays into sporting competition against fellow Paralympics aspirants, he thought he’d been confronted by a “freak show”, before the reality dawned upon him that he and his opponents were all in the same boat. In doing so he discovered something he hadn’t realised he’d been searching for all along: a level playing field.
Though he spent so much of his athletic career pursuing medals and nothing less, Elgin admits his veteran turn at Glasgow made him realise that it’s about competing as much as it is about winning. “Sometimes our gold medal match is making the team,” he says. And his own story could have been so different. When Elgin was 15 his father, Don Sr, sensed volatility and waywardness but also a desire to prove doubters wrong, so bet his son $1,000 he couldn’t avoid alcohol for 10 years. The bet was called off on Don Jr’s 21st birthday. He’d made his point.
Don Sr says his parenting outlook in those years was simple: a roof over his children’s heads “and a shitload of love”. He’s full of admiration for his son’s achievements but not surprised in the slightest. “I think if you asked him whether he’d rather have been born with two legs, you’d be surprised with the answer,” he says.
More than anything Don Elgin is a character. You can see why people want to be around him. “Who else would wear Crocs on the cover of their book?” he asks, and you have to admit, the list wouldn’t be long. Asked at his book launch whether he had a favourite prosthetic, he produced his “baby leg”, which he says reminds him of the uncharted territory into which his parents were stepping when he was born. “It reminds me I can get through,” he says.
Of Australia’s current Paralympians, Elgin is effusive in his praise. He’s most excited to watch wheelchair racer Kurt Fearnley (“He is a quality human, I love Kurt”), Scott Reardon in the 100m (“He’s only a little fella but he always puts in in there and has a crack”) and track star Angie Ballard.
Elgin believes athletes at these Games will reach levels of performance previously thought impossible, especially in sprint events. “Mate, they’ll be giving 10 point something a nudge,” he says. “Without a leg! That’s bloody impressive. My PB for the hundred metres was 12.22. The standard has gone up.”
Through it all, Don Elgin has come to conclude that the Paralympic Games are bigger than any individual athlete, and that sport genuinely is a vehicle for meaningful societal change. “The conversations that humans are having about opening the doors for people with disabilities, that’s healthy,” he says.
“We get one life and we should have a crack.”
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion