Tanni Grey-Thompson on winning four Olympic golds in Sydney
Desert Island Discs

Tanni Grey-Thompson on winning four Olympic golds in Sydney

B1IntermediateOctober 6, 20262 min
  • Interview
  • Sport

The wheelchair athlete Tanni Grey-Thompson was cast away by Sue Lawley in 2001. She recalls the pressure to do well at the Sydney Olympics and the relief when she managed to clinch four gold medals, but the long-distance phone call home to live-stream the medal ceremony nearly broke the bank. You can listen to the full episode on BBC Sounds.

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of our most memorable moments from the thousands of people we've cast away to our imaginary

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0:00

Hi, it's Lauren Laverne and this is Desert Island Discs Postcards, a selection of some of our most memorable moments from the thousands of people we've cast away to our imaginary desert island. Our cast away today is the wheelchair athlete Tani Gray-Thompson.

0:29

She spoke to Sue Lawley in 2001, a year after she'd clinched four gold medals at the Olympic Games in Sydney. I think there were so many mixed feelings with Sydney. So much of it was actually relief more than anything else because going into the Games there'd been quite a lot of pressure

0:43

on me to do well. And as the Games went on, the first medal was easy, the second one wasn't too bad. By the time I got to the third, everyone was saying, well, you're just going to win four, aren't you? And you just don't know. So it was a whole mixture things and it was great because my sister and her husband were out there which was really

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