In The World: “I’m a sporting ‘buddy’ to disabled athletes”

A few years ago, at a work event, I met some ex-military sports recovery athletes working with the charity Help for Heroes and Walking with The Wounded who had been injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of them had been in the Parachute Regiment – he’d been blown up and lost an arm, along with the others who’d also lost limbs. They spoke about how sport brought them out of depression. They had suffered from – or had overcome – post-traumatic stress disorder.

All of these ex-servicemen were using some form of sport, whether it was conquering Everest or the North Pole Challenge or something else, to help them recover. It gave them a new lease of life, brought them back into the brotherhood that they’d missed and because they were now part of a team, it gave them purpose and was making them healthy again. I thought: “I could make a difference here.” These are the kinds of people I wanted to work with in sport. And that’s how I got involved.

I’ve been volunteering now for seven years. I’ve helped train, buddy and mentor athletes at the Warrior Games, Invictus Games and, for the past four years, at the Working Wounded Games in the US. I also volunteer with Help for Heroes, most recently for the Enduroman Arch to Arc event, which is a 55-hour triathlon from London’s Marble Arch to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. At August’s Superhero Series, I was the swimmer for the Barclays team alongside Paralympian David Weir and visually impaired cyclist Laura Turner.

I’ve lived in London since 2000, when I left Zimbabwe because of the deteriorating political situation, and I haven’t looked back. I found it very difficult when I finished diving to switch the mentality from being so focused and going for gold, to doing sport for fun. It’s very, very hard to come out of that. Volunteering gives me back that sense of purpose and being part of a team again, which I’ve missed. It exposes me to sport again but in a different capacity, and getting in touch with people I admire in the Olympic and Paralympic fields. I love giving back to these people, knowing that I can make a difference.

If I can help someone to keep going, it’s just so humbling and so rewarding. A couple of months ago, someone in the States who I once buddied took his own life. Combating mental ill health is still a work in progress. It doesn’t get discussed enough, but these are the things that go through people’s minds. They get depressed, some suicidal. If you put them in a healthy sporting environment – I’m not saying it’s the be-all and end-all but it certainly helps. It gives them goals and it gives them the camaraderie again and it gives them something different to think about.