'Swimming earned me gold medals and greatness - but losing a leg gave me a life'
When it comes to inspiring a generation of athletes, Alice Tai takes some beating.
Partly because of her supreme abilities as a Paralympian swimmer – the 24-year-old is a world and European champion. And partly because of her MBE in 2017 for her services to the sport. But mostly it is because of her powerful back story that she shares in a new Channel 4 documentary, Amputating Alice, tonight.
The neuroscience graduate, from Poole in Dorset, was born with clubfoot. She spent much of her childhood in a wheelchair due to 14 major surgeries before the age of 12. In January last year, just seven months before she was due to compete at the Commonwealth Games, she chose to have the lower part of her right leg removed.
It would finally relieve the excruciating pain that had, quite literally, brought her to her knees. Earlier this month, she clinched gold in 100m backstroke at the Games in Birmingham to crown a truly remarkable comeback. A life finally doing the little things, however, means infinitely more to her.
Alice and Matt relax at their London home (Philip Coburn /Daily Mirror)“I’ve always wanted to be able to walk a dog,” she told The Mirror. “I never could on crutches. Swimming is so irrelevant in the bigger scheme of things. I can stand and cook now. I still have difficulties with the prosthetic and a disability in my left leg, so it’s not perfect. But I can do so much more than I could pre-amputation. I can finally go down the drive if I order food and get it myself. I don’t have to ask someone to go for me.”
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The first of Alice’s operations was at just 20 weeks. By 12 she’d had enough. “There just wasn’t much more the doctors could do to help me walk better by that point. It was more aesthetic,” she said. Her childhood suffered too. “I missed out on so much. Like friendship and social groups. Also school trips as I was deemed a safety hazard.
“There was a drama lesson I remember vividly. Everyone was in these huts you had to go up five or six stairs to get into. I loved drama. But I wasn’t allowed to go in because they couldn’t get my wheelchair up the stairs. So the teaching assistant sat with me outside while I could hear my classmates inside having fun. It was heartbreaking. Probably my first memory of being really actively excluded.”
Alice won 2023 Commonwealth title (Getty Images)Alice learned to swim aged eight but it was not until October 2010 –when she could be classed as a disability swimmer – that things changed for her. She impressed scouts who persuaded her family to fund a trip to Sheffield for a competition. She was then on a GB talent programme that December.
“It literally snowballed from there,” she said. “I went to my first Europeans in 2014, then the Paralympics in Rio. I ended up winning gold.” As she found acceptance, Alice’s self-belief soared. By 2019, she’d become a world champion and record holder in seven different swimming disciplines. I was more confident and comfortable within myself,” she said.
“When I stepped up to the pool, every athlete there had a disability. I was finally around people who fully understood. People like me, living their best life. I’d been self-conscious, worried that my legs hadn’t fully developed, my muscles were really small and that my shoulders were broadening with swimming.
After July’s backstroke victory (Getty Images)“But seeing phenomenal swimmers with similar physiques really changed my perspective. I started to love myself, despite everything.” Still, Alice would continue to find herself in excruciating pain. Particularly in her right leg. “It was horrific,” she said. “I’d go to sleep in pain. I’d wake up in pain. I couldn’t use crutches because I just couldn’t put any weight on from my arms. I was often crawling around my flat on my knees. I’d try and move a chair and put my right leg up on it so that I could stand and cook.
“I cried sometimes. A mixture of pain and frustration. My ankle was completely non-functional. It just seemed really silly that it was still there. So, as soon as I had the first meeting with the doctors and they agreed, I saw a better future for myself.”
Although her surgery took place last year, Alice revealed it had been coming for a decade. “My final op in 2012 had gone a bit wrong and I’d lost mobility from it,” she said. “I ended up on crutches permanently. But they were affecting the nerves in my arms.” Understandably, her mum Angela, dad Steve and her friends backed her decision to act.
Alice does the butterfly at Glasgow meeting (Getty Images)Waking up after the surgery, Alice felt she’d ended a nightmare. “As soon as I came around, I didn’t have that pain any more,” she said. "In recovery Matt, my boyfriend, did most of the cooking. I needed help in and out of the shower and with pretty much everything. I had to learn to walk again. Most people think about amputation as going from a completely able-bodied limb, to a prosthetic. But my prosthetic leg is tenfold more functional than my actual leg was. So I didn’t lose mobility.”
Alice ignored sport and prioritised the advice from orthopaedic and prosthetic experts. “I’ve got the rest of my life in front of me and I really wanted to nail learning to walk,” she said. "Because if my gait isn’t the way I want it to be now, then it might never be. Obviously, I still swim. I want to go to competitions and do my best. But swimming is not going to last forever. It’s a transient moment at the start of my life.”
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Asked why she documented her story on video, she said: “I just wanted to be able to look back on such a monumental moment in my life and recall it. Also to show people who didn’t know me before I had my leg amputated. Some people have Wedding Day videos. I have an Amputation Day video.”
* Amputating Alice is on Channel 4 tonight at 10.30pm.
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