Peter Norfolk: 'I like to think I have changed the standard of quad tennis'

Boxing Day, 1979, 2pm. A fortnight after his 19th birthday, Peter Norfolk was taking a left-hand bend on his Kawasaki when he hit something; he still doesn't know what. He went over the handlebars, and his bike landed on top of him. He broke his back and several ribs, and stopped breathing. A year later, when he finally came out of Stoke Mandeville hospital, he was paraplegic, paralysed from the chest down.

"I'd been pretty active at school," Norfolk says. "Football, rugby, cricket. Squash was my big thing. After the accident, I was determined to stay that way. Fighting spirit, if you like. I tried a load of sports – archery, swimming, table tennis, basketball. Nothing really grabbed me."

Then, in 1989, a decade after his crash, he returned to Stoke Mandeville to watch the annual games long called the Wheelchair Olympics, and saw a demonstration of wheelchair tennis. "It was a lightbulb moment," he says. "A real 'that's what I want to do.'"

Part of the appeal, he says, was "selfish: in tennis, there was only myself to blame if I lost". He found a coach at his local tennis club in Farnborough who was willing to help, and nearly a quarter of a century later has been selected for ParalympicsGB in his third Games.

A double gold medallist in the singles competitions at Athens and Beijing, he has also won the US Open twice and the Australian Open four times. In the doubles, he holds Paralympic silver and bronze medals and a clutch of Grand Slam titles. Norfolk competes in the quad division, open to athletes whose impairment affects three or more limbs: in 2000, he suffered a further spinal complication which left him losing strength in his right hand, arm and shoulder.

"My racket started flying out of my hand, and I didn't understand why," he says. "I needed another operation, a difficult one, a spinal cordectomy. Afterwards, I had to learn to play with my racket strapped to my hand. It's been a lot of hard work and training. But I like to think I have changed the standard of quad tennis. That's the legacy I'd like to leave."

Norfolk hasn't had the best of seasons since winning the Australian Open earlier this year, and admits to concern about the added pressure ParalympicsGB's athletes may feel following their able-bodied colleagues' "sensational" performances.

But at 51 years of age, he is thrilled still to be representing his country, and to be beating much younger players. "It will be a very exciting competition," he says. "The support will be phenomenal. Now it's up to us to harness it to our benefit."

Article by "Mr.Jon Henley"