Team Great Britain archer Jodie Grinham brought an extra teammate with her to the 2024 Paris Paralympics.
Grinham, 31, is competing while seven months pregnant, telling The Athletic that she may be the first athlete ever in danger of having her water break on the podium.
“I will have achieved something that no one else can say they’ve done,” she said. “I [will have] been to a Paralympics at seven months pregnant and got to compete.”
“[But] I’m not doing any of it for a statement, I’m doing it for me,” she continued. “If that is enough for people to say, ‘Why can’t we?’, then fantastic.”
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Grinham is 28 weeks along, the same point in her earlier pregnancy that she had her first baby, son Christian, in 2022.
In order to prepare for her unique circumstances, Grinham, who won a silver medal at the 2016 Rio Paralympics, altered her training. She told The Athletic that she and coach Charlotte Burgess implemented “pregnancy prep sessions,” where Grinham would come to the full draw position, indicating she’s ready to shoot, and Burgess would stimulate “a slight movement to act like a baby’s kick or [tickle] her side to simulate a flutter sensation.”
“I’ve felt a really good kick just before I’m about to shoot and I just think: ‘It’s all right, Mummy knows you’re there’,” she said. “I’m not annoyed or upset. They don’t know what’s going on. I’ve made this decision. If I go to the Games and I’m in the gold final and the baby kicks me and I lose gold, then what? What did I expect? I knew the risks.”
Grinham is competing in the mixed team compound open with teammate Nathan McQueen. The British Paralympic Association describes the division as for those with “lower levels of impairment in the upper or lower limbs.” Grinham has no fingers and “half a thumb,” adding, “my arms are different lengths, my shoulder is undeveloped through my left side that goes through to my left core and left hip.”
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Because her disability makes it difficult to grip a bow and archery rules prohibit a player from attaching it to themselves, Grinham and her father created a modified bow — especially challenging because they could not find evidence of anyone with her disability participating in archery before.
“I’ve always been one of those people that if I’m told I can’t do something, it makes me want to do it more,” she told The Standard in a 2016 interview.
In Paris, Grinham and McQueen scored the second-highest out of the 12 teams to compete in the Ranking Round, earning a bye into the quarterfinals. Next, they’ll go head-to-head with either Team Australia or the host Team France.
“I might never get the chance to have a baby again,” Grinham said. “I’m not going to regret a single kick or a single bad arrow. I am going to be here and be the happy athlete mum that I know I deserve to be.”
