Paralympic swimming legend announced as latest NRC Ambassador | Latest news

A blind Paralympic legend who both competed as a swimmer and led the 2012 ParalympicsGB has been appointed as an ambassador for the new NHS National Rehabilitation Centre.

Tim Reddish CBE, from Nottingham, won five medals at three Paralympic Games between 1992 and 2000, before going on to chair the British Paralympic Association and sit on the International Paralympic Committee.

Amongst his long list of accolades, Tim is also a Deputy Lieutenant for Nottinghamshire, Freeman for the City of Nottingham, has been inducted into the England Swim Hall of Fame, and was awarded an MBE, an OBE and then a CBE for Services to Sport.

Now Tim’s latest voluntary role is as an Ambassador for the brand new NRC – a 70-bed rehab facility which aims to transform rehabilitation in the UK and will be the first of its kind in the NHS.

Tim said: “I’m very pleased to be asked to be an NRC Ambassador and to be able to give something back to my home city and county which has been good to me.

“Rehabilitation is essentially learning to adapt and overcome, and that’s something that I have to do every day of my life. I want people to have the opportunities that weren’t there in the past.  

“To me, rehab is about enabling someone to maximise their own potential, and that means giving them the psychological and physical environment that they need to do that, and the NRC is designed to do just that.

“For rehabilitation to be successful, we have to learn about that individual and ensure that their rehab activities are bespoke to them and integrated into their life.

“Rehabilitation is the process, the outcome is that they will have the confidence to do the things they have always done – so much of this is about giving the individual self-belief.”

Tim has retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary degenerative condition affecting his sight. He wasn’t diagnosed until the age of 31 when he was married with two young children and working as manager of the Northern Baths swimming pool in Basford.

It was only when a family member bumped into Tim’s wife and told her that Tim’s cousin had been diagnosed with an eye condition that Tim went for tests which revealed that he too was suffering significant sight loss.

He said: “I used to wear specs, but I actually had tunnel vision, although I didn’t know it at the time because I thought that was how everyone saw the world. Most people have 180 degrees vision, and when I was tested, my field of vision was 5 degrees.

“The doctor said to me ‘there is no cure, and you will likely go blind, so we don’t need to see you again’.

“One day I was a swimming pool manager and driving my motorbike, and the next I was told I was going blind. It was a kick in the teeth.”

As his eye condition was progressive Tim continued to have eye tests so that he could compete in the right level of competitive swimming. 

Tim also began supporting the coaching of Margaret Kelly who came out of retirement for the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.

Margaret gave Tim her commemorative medal when she returned and encouraged him to start preparing for the 1992 Barcelona Paralympics which were four years away. Tim gave Margaret his commemorative medal from Barcelona in return, although he also took home both a Silver and a Bronze medal.

Tim went on to compete for ParalympicsGB in two further Paralympics, winning a Silver medal and a Bronze medal in the 1996 games in Atlanta, and a Silver medal in Sydney in 2000.

Even when Tim had an injured shoulder, he wouldn’t let it stop him and he took up running with his arm in a sling. That year he completed the 1993 London Marathon in just outside of four hours with his sister as his guide runner.

He said: “In competitive sports, it’s accepted that you’re going to have injuries, so the mindset is more ‘it’s happened, but this is just part of my journey as an athlete’.

Tim’s eyesight progressively got worse, and a secondary eye issue destroyed any vision he had left. By 1996, at the age of 39, he no longer had any functional sight. Tim moved into working in sports development with a focus on inclusion and disability in sport.

Tim said: “I was actually content when I went fully blind, because I wasn’t waiting for it to happen anymore.”

He taught himself how to navigate around and began learning Braille, but scrapped it when screenreader technology became available.

Tim explained that to navigate he still uses a combination of high-tech tools, such as the Be My Eyes app and Meta Ray-Ban glasses, but other times low-tech methods still work better, such as using Lego with a personal trainer to understand a new configuration of the local gym.

He said: “I’m having to adapt and adjust constantly.

“Every time I step out of the front door it’s a new environment and I have to adapt to the conditions. Nature changes, the sounds are different if there is rain, snow or more traffic, so even the same route is different every time.

“Equally, I have to rely on muscle memory for my accessibility apps, and if they change the layout of one of the apps, I have to relearn it all again.”

Tim explained that he had an opportunity to move into a different part of the world of disability sports and he jumped at it.

“Swimming was my love, so in 1998 I took a risk and a leap of faith and went to work for British Para Swimming.”

The rest was history for Tim – he quickly rose through the ranks at Para Swimming to become an Executive Director in 2010, as well as Chairman for the British Paralympic Association from 2008 until 2017, encompassing the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics. In 2017, he joined the International Paralympic Committee as a Non-Executive Director.

In addition to being a national and international advisor for disability in sport, Tim became a Non-Executive Director of Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which has given Tim important insights into the NHS, and which will further help him in his new role as NRC Ambassador.

Miriam Duffy, NRC Director, said: “We are honoured that Tim Reddish CBE has agreed to be an NRC Ambassador, particularly given all of his experience in the world of Paralympic sports and the NHS.

“Tim is a wonderful champion for good rehabilitation and accessibility provision, as well as encouraging and inspiring our patients who come through the doors that life after a serious illness or injury can be remarkable.

“We’re all looking forward to working with Tim over the coming months as we welcome our very first patients to the NRC.”