One of the great things about the Olympics and Paralympics games are the storylines. While we view the participants as extraordinary athletes who perform amazing feats and watch in anticipation as records fall, we may overlook the human aspect in these competitors. Each one of them has a story; some that evoke a sense of pride in one’s own country and others that unite us as a global community.
In these Games, host nation London’s women’s sitting volleyball team has its share of such stories. One such story belongs to Martine Wilthshire, a 7/7 survivor who was seated next to Shehzad Tanweer on the London underground train as he detonated a bomb that killed himself and 52 others and left Wiltshire with massive blood loss and double below-knee amputations. Seven years later, she gained a place on her country’s sitting volleyball team. “It’s amazing to be selected. It’s the biggest sporting event on earth, and it’s coming to the city where I was born. I have dreamt of being part of it and now I am going there to do my country proud.”
You can read her amazing story and many other stories of her teammates’ paths to the grand stage of the 2012 Paralympics at: