Paralympian medal winner Nicole Turner is set for Tokyo 2020: ‘People see the glory, not the 5am starts’

There, Nicole “picked up” four medals — two silver and two bronze — “and my swimming times were pretty good too.” This, she says, means “that extra bit of excitement” around Tokyo 2020 (yes, the upcoming Paralympic Games are still called 2020; just as if the last peculiar 16 months had never happened), “even if it will be different to any other Games.”

In order to compete at the highest level, Nicole has put in hours and hours of early-morning training, including a commute time of one hour and 10 minutes from her home in Portarlington, Co Laois, to the National Aquatic Centre in Blanchardstown in Dublin. She went to her first Paralympics in Brazil when she was 14 (she was the youngest member of the Ireland team at the 2016 Rio Paralympics, where she made five finals), and is a World Championship bronze medallist.

During the various lockdowns, her usual schedule had to adapt, of course. “We still trained six days a week, but usually there would have been 18 of us training every day, whereas then, there were only four of us and that can be challenging. There would be people having good days and bad days, and when there are so few of you, if one person is having a bad day, it might... not bring the team down, but there will be that very quiet member of the team…”

There was also the question of motivation. “It was hard to keep motivated when there was nothing to train for…” she admits.

Harder again was last year, when — once Tokyo was officially postponed — all swimming pools closed. “I was out of the pool for two-and-a-half months. That’s the longest I’ve ever been out of the pool. Many other sports, they had to stop training but they could do their sport at home. Swimming is the one sport where you really can’t; not many people have a pool at home!” she says, laughing. Sea swimming, Nicole says, “is a completely different sport,” as well as not being within her 5km limit.

“The first 10 days were actually quite nice. We went from being full-time athletes, to having a bit of a break. But then, as time went on, it made me realise that before Covid-19 hit, there would have been days when I wouldn’t want to swim; I’m at an age when my friends are going out, and there would have been times that I would have wanted to go with them rather than train, but Covid made me realise just how much I love swimming, and the impact it has on my life.”

Nicole started swimming when she was five — “I have two older brothers; they swam, so I swam.” But swimming became, for her, something else, something more, when she was six. “I was watching the 2008 Games in Beijing and when the swimming was on, there was a small person just like me, and she went out and won a Paralympic gold medal. She’s called Ellie Simmonds. When I saw her, I thought, ‘I want to be just like her’.”

Nicole’s diagnosis — with hypochondroplasia — had only come about a year earlier, when she was five. “I’ll be honest,” her mother, Bernie, says now, “the first five years of Nicole’s life were so stressful. When Nicole was born, she was classed as a ‘failure to thrive’ baby. Not only was she small, she also had reflux. When she was seven months, she had really bad pneumonia and we nearly lost her.

“It was a very difficult time. I had qualified as a psychiatric nurse, but everything went on hold. I never went back to work, I just looked after Nicole — she was a challenging baby.”

Throughout those years, Bernie knew there was more to Nicole’s health issues than the doctors would acknowledge. “From eight weeks, I knew there was something wrong with Nicole, and we didn’t get the diagnosis until she was five-and-a-half years old.

“I’d done nursing,” she continues. “I knew about advocacy for the family. That made it more frustrating. Before I went into psychiatry, I did paediatrics and I did general nursing. I remember when I was on the paediatric ward, this nurse said to me — ‘Always listen to the parents; the mum’s gut feeling is usually right when it comes to the child, because they’re with them 24/7’.”

And yet, when Bernie, as a mother, insisted something wasn’t right with her daughter, she says she wasn’t listened to. “Because I’m not very tall, this consultant actually said to me, ‘you’re not exactly six feet, and your daughter’s not going to be six feet…’ It was such a challenging time.”

In the end, it was only when that particular consultant was on annual leave that progress was made. “A locum said to me, ‘There’s something not right with your daughter,’ and I was like, ‘10 out of 10 for observation!’” Bernie says.

“He went out of the room then, and when he came back, I said, ‘Please don’t go out there and whisper in the corridor. I’ve waited all this time; if you’ve got something to say, just say it in front of us’. He said, ‘I want to refer you to genetics in Crumlin,’ and I said, ‘Thank you!’”

When the diagnosis finally came, “I did cry,” Bernie says, “I cried and cried, because I wanted this perfect child that I never got. Now, nobody would change it.” From the time of diagnosis, “the support mechanisms were fantastic. We found Little People of Ireland, and [author and activist] Sinéad Burke was the first little person, with her family, that we met. Through them, we heard about the World Dwarf Games and we said, ‘This is great, we’ll take Nicole there and let her meet little people her age, from all over the world’.”

At those games, Nicole swam, really just for fun, but “she won all these medals,” Bernie says, “and one of the coaches from one of the other countries came up to us and said, ‘Does she swim seriously?’ I said, ‘No, she swims casually at the local club,’ he said, ‘You need to nurture this, she’s going to be fantastic’. That’s how it all happened.”

“I went and I won eight medals,” Nicole says. “Four of them were for swimming, and four of them were gold. It was after that that I thought, ‘OK, I want to do this’.”

There is no successful athlete, and certainly not one as young as Nicole, who doesn’t have a solid wall of support, practical and emotional behind them — “I’m swimming six days a week,” Nicole says; “I do three gym sessions on top of that; it’s basically a full-time job.”

For Nicole, it’s Bernie who drives the hour and 10 minutes each way to the pool six days a week, sometimes doing the run twice a day. “Prior to Nicole swimming in Dublin, I’d never driven on a motorway,” Bernie says now. “I’d only done local roads. At first, I used to get on the M50 thinking, ‘Please don’t let me crash, please don’t let me crash’. But now, since 2017, I drive all over Ireland, and I always think, ‘Where was that problem?’ There wasn’t a problem, it was just my mindset.”

As well as driving, there’s cooking and feeding. “There’s a food flask, I’d recommend that to every swimming family,” Bernie says with a laugh. “I’d prepare a dinner and the food stays warm in the flask for seven to eight hours, so Nicole can have a hot dinner on the way home.”

Everything, she freely admits, revolves around Nicole’s swimming. “I’d sacrifice anything,” she says. “To get the achievement she gets, it’s like nothing else. Anybody out there who has got a child who can succeed in sport, it’s the best feeling ever.”

The year the European Championships took place in Dublin, 2018, was also the year of Nicole’s Junior Cert. “That was challenging,” she says. “I’d be doing homework in the car on the way home, then still up at 11.30 at night, doing more.” Since then, she has re-evaluated.

“My school let me finish 40 minutes early during Transition Year, so as to be at training on time, but after TY they said it wouldn’t be feasible for me to do that any more. So, a joint decision was made between myself, my coaches, my parents, the school. If I was to continue school, I wouldn’t get the best out of school, and I wouldn’t get the best out of swimming, I needed to pick one or the other. So, I decided to put my education on hold and concentrate on swimming.”

She will, she says, pick it up again. “Education is vital. I do plan on doing my Leaving Cert and doing some sort of course, but I don’t know in what way yet. There are lots of routes and options.”

Right now, her plan is to concentrate on swimming. “I’m still young and don’t plan on retiring any time soon. I’ve still got a good few Paralympic Games in me. In Rio, I was only 14. I went with absolutely no expectations, I went to enjoy myself and I made five finals. I didn’t really realise how big an event it is. With Tokyo, I see how big it is, and how serious it is now. I have an expectation of myself that I wouldn’t have had in Rio.”

And this, both Nicole and Bernie say, is where the fundraising campaign comes in. “Para means equal,” Nicole says. “And I’m not one for complaining — I’m very focussed on just being the swimmer — but I do think there is a bit of a difference; Paralympians are looked on a bit differently. We’re basically asking the general public to get behind us by donating as much or as little as they can. We deserve equal opportunities with the Olympians. Para sport is growing massively and I think it can grow a lot more. Raising funds will give us the equal opportunity of resources in sport.”

As for the ‘will it, won’t it’ nature of speculation around Tokyo 2020, due to take place from August 24 to September 5, Nicole pays it as little attention as she can. “To be honest, I try to stay away from all the social media articles that are saying there is uncertainty around Tokyo. I’m just treating it like it’s going ahead in my head. Yes, it will be a very different games to normal, but I think for me to perform my best when it does go ahead, is to treat it as if it is happening.

“We have amazing support staff working behind the scenes doing everything they can to get us there in the safest possible way, so I trust them that they will do everything to work out in the athletes’ favour.”

Nicole talks about “the hours of work the public will never see. They see the glory, they don’t see the 5am start”. So what keeps her going? “I think it’s just your mindset. It can be very challenging, and swimming is a very demanding sport, but that’s where the support comes in, from my family, my friends, my coaches. When people look at a podium and see a winner, they don’t see all the work and sacrifices that go on behind the scenes. But it’s all worth it; to go out and represent my country, it’s a huge honour.”

 Help to support Paralympics Ireland’s campaign, The Next Level, to raise funds for Team Ireland’s journey to Tokyo and beyond by donating now at paralympics.ie