‘Don’t tell me I can’t do something’ — para-triathlete Kirsty Weir on making her Paralympic ‘dream’ a reality

1 Sep 2024

The para-triathlete is undaunted by the challenges thrown her way, and has overcome huge odds to be in Team SA at the Games.

The makeshift workshop and interview room is actually a space at the end of a corridor in the Paralympic village. Rohan Kennedy is assembling Kirsty Weir’s competition bike and this is a good time to have a chat with the para-triathlete. I ask her to wait a minute so that I can fetch a chair, even if it is made of sturdy cardboard, just like the beds the athletes sleep on.

“Not to worry, I’ll sit on the floor. I’m happy to sit on the floor.” The chair is fetched, but her point sums up who she is – in fact, who every Paralympian is.

Joy, a word she uses often, is etched across Weir’s features, and “I’m the luckiest Paralympian in the world” is the phrase she uses most often.

“I have been gifted the most amazing opportunity, and in this past year that I’ve been doing para-triathlon I’ve met the most amazing people in my life. I genuinely can’t express my happiness. I feel safe, accepted, and it just feels right. And that’s the hardest thing for me to understand, because I’ve never experienced that before. I’ve had many trials and tribulations that I’m not comfortable going into now, but for the first time, I’m feeling a bit safer,” she says.

Originally from East London, this 44-year-old has always been on the move, not that all of it was voluntary. “I went to almost every school in East London because we moved house every two years. And my mom loved doing up houses, so we were always on the go.”

The younger Weir was such a talented athlete that she went to the US on a cross-country scholarship and entered her first Two Oceans half-marathon in Cape Town at the age of 18.

There, she finished 18th in 90 min 45 sec. A year later she was the second woman home in 82:27 and the next year she won the famous race in 78:24 at 20.

The world was at her feet, in every sense. However, only in a parallel universe does life follow a script.

A rare condition

“I can remember the day as clearly as anything. We were living at Atlantic Beach in Cape Town, and I was running down the main road. All of a sudden, my left leg wasn’t there. It was swinging. That’s the only way to describe it. Fourteen years ago, I was 30.

“I went to a physiotherapist, biokineticist, chiropractor, even the Sports Science Institute. I tore strips from the Yellow Pages and put them into my shoes to build them up. I was told by the experts: ‘It’s all in your mind.’ I just kept trying to find an answer.

“Surely I wasn’t fabricating what was happening to me? But you think you must be mad, because these people are telling you there’s nothing wrong with you. And then I started having severe migraines, which I still have for three or four days at a time.

“I’d fall a lot, be unsteady on my feet, have a loss of power and balance. I didn’t know what was going on but I kept running, kept trying to be who I had been. I was even tipped for a top 10 Comrades finish that year.

“Things got worse and the next 14 years were difficult. I was eventually diagnosed with a rare condition called neurological lupus. It took so long to discover that I’ve got lesions on the brain.

I’m losing my teeth, my hair has fallen out… But, there’s nothing negative. Hair is hair, teeth are teeth.

“It’s affected the brain and destroyed muscles on my left side. In those 14 years, everything degenerated, and I was constantly told by experts that it was all in my mind, that I was ‘crazy’. So I kept going, but the performances kept getting worse. I didn’t understand, but being stubborn and stupid, I kept going.

“People say, ‘I’m sorry’, but I’m so grateful. I know that the condition will never reverse or go away.”

She stretches out her hands. It’s a warm day in Paris and warm enough inside the village for short sleeves, but Weir has her green Team South Africa tracksuit on and she’s still feeling cold.

Read more: Jordaan’s inspirational Paralympic journey is an example of faith and support

“You can see I’m blue because the blood doesn’t flow, and I get hypothermia quickly. I’m losing my teeth, my hair has fallen out. It just attacks everything in your body. So it’s attacked my brain, my nerves, my muscles.

“But, there’s nothing negative. Hair is hair, teeth are teeth. I have life and I have this life. I am blessed. I ask myself, who gets to do this life that I have?”

Committed to the rules

Weir is still soaking up the experience of being a 2024 Paralympian living in the official village in Paris. She brought her own Futurelife low-GI food and some sachets of Nestlé instant coffee, not knowing that all nutrition is freely available in the village.

Before she takes a sip of a protein chocolate shake from a “Grab ’n Go” that is available for athletes, she asks Kennedy, her coach: “Is this okay for me to have? Does it have a banned substance in it?”

His answer is no, but it shows the commitment Weir has to being a Team SA Paralympian that she’s concerned about contaminated liquids.

“Whenever I’ve travelled, I’ve always been alone. I’ve never had anybody with me, and with a bike and gammy legs and all sorts, it’s been a hard year. I’ve always had to take my own food – I can’t afford to buy anything. For the first time I’m having a ready-made protein drink,” she says.

If I wasn’t afflicted by this, then I wouldn’t be living the dream as a para-triathlete in Paris.

“I’m completely overwhelmed. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Some days I get up to train and I make it to the garage and I fall on the floor and spend the next three hours crying because there’s just nothing, nothing left in me. But I keep getting up, keep trying and that in itself gives me a reason to continue.

“I have a support system at home, but my parents are…” Her voice trails off. She takes a moment.

“We struggle. My dad is 82 and my mom is 75 and life is difficult. We had to move to Gqeberha less than a month ago…

“If I wasn’t afflicted by this, then I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be living the dream as a para-triathlete in Paris. I had wanted to start out as a para-runner, and I was classified for athletics. So I thought, oh, cool, I’m gonna run now.

Read more: Get to know your Team SA Paralympic athletes and their classifications

“And then a lady from Triathlon South Africa, Beryl Campbell, phoned me and suggested I try triathlon. I replied: ‘You’re bloody mad. I don’t swim.’

“But don’t plant a seed in my head. Two days later, I found out there was a local triathlon in Knysna. I borrowed a bike and an old helmet and bike shoes. Afterwards, my mom said: ‘You didn’t enjoy that.’ I said: ‘Oh, Mommy, I loved it!’

“From there, I borrowed bikes for the next year, became the South African para-champ, the African para-champ. But I still didn’t know about Paralympics until Triathlon South Africa said I must try the world circuit. But it told me I wouldn’t qualify for Paris because I only had a year to do so.

“Don’t tell me I can’t do something. I’m stubborn and stupid. That’s what keeps me going.” DM

Gary Lemke is in Paris as part of Team SA.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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South Africa

A rare condition

Committed to the rules