You're the tragedy

"All world champions have only one thing in common - they all want to be world champions," Li once said.

I thought of that when I was interviewing Tani.

When she was a child, disabled people were rarely seen on British streets and access was scarce. Her grandmother would not admit her illness in front of others. Other little girls shouted "cripple" after her. When she got on the train, she would throw her wheelchair off the train and climb out. "People like you deserve to sit in the back of a cattle car, so they don't get in the way of other normal people," someone commented on the Internet.

Her approach: "I never listen to people tell me what I can and can't do!"

She has a strong personality and says she doesn't want to be a basketball player "because she can't stand the stupidity of other people," but when she wanted to be a wheelchair marathoner, she couldn't even find a coach to teach disabled people. One coach told her, "I'll never train someone like you."

"What do you mean, 'such a person'?" she asked. A woman? A Welsh woman? Someone who dyes her hair? Or someone who wears contact lenses? Oh, you mean disabled people?"

The coach said awkwardly, "You're right, it should be someone in a wheelchair."

She trains 50 weeks a year, including the morning of her wedding, when she crashed twice on the road, killing her best friend. I asked, "Are you going through all this for the gold medal, for the world number one?"

Her answer was simple: "For me, competition means winning gold MEDALS. That's what I want to do, to be the best in the world. I want to win."

Eleven gold, four silver and one bronze MEDALS were won during the five Olympic Games, and more than 30 world records were set. Described by The Guardian as "Britain's greatest Paralympian".

She was raised to the House of Lords and a life peer in 2010 and questioned the lack of equivalence in Britain's MEDALS system. The same medal, other Paralympic athletes and Olympic athletes, there is a clear difference in the treatment. At this year's London Olympics, she fought it publicly.

I asked, "When you fight something, there are two outcomes. One is that you win, and the other is that you lose."

"Yes," she says, "but being an athlete, it builds your attitude. Because you're not going to win every time, and sometimes even if you play well, you're not going to win. You may not win the battle, but you can still win the war, goes an English proverb. You have to keep fighting, never give up, keep moving forward, keep moving forward."

She never backed down, she never flinched, she never thought she was weak.

A British journalist once asked her a question, "You must feel a tragedy when you are in a wheelchair."

Her answer was a rhetorical question, "You must feel like a tragedy as a journalist?"

Each venue at the Games will have seats more than two meters wide, with the best views and angles around the arena, and these seats are for people with disabilities only. It's extremely difficult to park in London during rush hour, and drivers are walking around saying to us, "Look, everywhere, the outermost, the most convenient, the largest parking space, must be disabled. Anyone else who parks illegally will be towed immediately." We stayed in a small hotel, in an old and narrow lane, but where there are steps, there is a modified barrier-free access.

It is not easy for an ancient city with a history of 2,000 years to carry out such a comprehensive transformation, depending on a country's attitude towards disabled people. The British press commented that "in 40 years, Tani Grey-Thompson has done more for disabled people than any politician in Downing Street."

Tani says she never wanted to change the world, she just wanted to push herself to the limit and be the best she could be. But as a result, the world changed.