Paralympics: Meet Doncaster-born medal hope Jo Butterfield

Butterfield, who hails from Woodlands but is now based in Scotland, wrote about her whirlwind five years in recent a blog for British Athletics.

Five years ago I suffered a completely unexpected spinal cord injury. I was just a regular person working for the MOD doing everyday normal things, and then I was told I had a tumour on my spinal cord. I had an operation to remove the tumour and was told there was a 0.01% chance that I could be paralysed afterwards. Hours later I woke up to the news.

It is a huge life changing experience, but I chose not to dwell on it. The whole thing has given me a big reality check on life. I stressed about so many unimportant things in life, and when something life changing like that happens, it puts everything into perspective.

I spent six months in hospital, and sport was part of my rehabilitation. That’s where my first taste of sport came from, and I enjoyed it. It was a nice break from the mundane physio you were put through every day. At that point being a para sport athlete was something that was never on my radar at all.

I had enjoyed sport before my disability, but I was never involved in anything. My work for the MOD put a lot of focus on physical fitness but not any particular sport. There was a social side to taking up sport after my operation. When I was in school I used to avoid athletics like the plague, it wasn’t my cup of tea and I had never tried throwing, I knew what the discus was but had never heard of a club.

It was wheelchair rugby that I fell in love with first. It’s a popular sport particularly for tetraplegics and I was introduced to that. I just found it so much fun, you were able to just sit in a chair and smash someone else!

Through that I was talent spotted by UK Sport and asked to take a look at athletics and I thought why not? So I went along to a talent transfer day and before you know it four months down the line I earned my first GB selection.

Straight away the first thing everybody said to me was Rio is too soon, it is out of the question. I was so naïve to begin with, I was just doing it for the enjoyment. It was so far off the realms of possibility that I didn’t even dare to dream about it. But it was quite quick, that once I was classified and had been competing for six months people started saying I could go far in the sport. I did make a choice right there and then, that if I’m going to do it, I’ll give it my all. I gave up work and started training full time, and I think it’s important you put that sort of dedication into it.

I was completely like a fish out of water when I competed in my first major competition at the 2014 European Championships in Swansea. I did not have a clue what I was doing. I turned up and everyone had these fancy frames they threw from. I was so inexperienced, but I think that helped me in a way. I was just there to throw my best. I think the enjoyment is very much at the heart of why I do it. I have to tell myself that more and more, because it is hard and there is a lot of pressure and expectation as you start to win. I am no longer this person nobody knows, people are now expecting me to throw well.

Doha (the IPC Athletics World Championships) proved to be another step up in competition. Through that I earned early selection for Rio and it has been a huge boost for me. You try not to entertain the idea of a Paralympics too much, but it is always there in the background. I’m trying to stick to the plan and not get carried away with the hype of it all.

n Butterfield competes in the Women’s F51 Club Throw Final on Sunday (21:33 UK time) and Women’s F52 Discus Final on Wednesday (21:39 UK Time).