Member

On the cost of chairs, when I was competing, they were not quite as expensive as they are now. Racing chairs are now somewhere between £40,000 and £50,000. I know several athletes who have missed races because their chair did not arrive. The Spanish athlete Santi Sanz missed the Peachtree 10k. American athlete Tatyana McFadden nearly did not get to do the Berlin Marathon because the chair did not arrive. A significant difference between when I was competing and now is that there actually is prize money. I won a lot of gift vouchers when I was competing, but now it is actually a significant amount of money, so it is impacting people’s earnings. That is a very small group of people, and they probably, like me, would have more of a platform to complain and to make something happen.