Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is Desert Island Discs Postcards,
a collection of funny and heartwarming moments from some of our many castaways.
Today's castaway is Britain's most successful Paralympian athlete, Dame Sarah Story.
I spoke to her last year before she went to the Paris Games, her ninth Paralympics.
The first games I remember watching is 1984,
but what I didn't realise was the Paralympics was a thing
because I had never really been given any inkling that...
you know any sport was possible for people who weren't you know two arms two legs full able-bodied people so I looked at the the Olympic Games and thought I wonder
if I could go to the Olympics and it wasn't until around 1990 that I watched a TV programme about a young lady who was hoping to qualify for the Paralympic team in 92 and she was missing part of her arm and I was born with my left arm short of the my right no left hand not fully formed and so I was
like I wonder whether it counts for people like me I'd never seen myself as any different to anyone else I knew that I just did things a little bit differently sometimes But
because I was swimming just as quickly,
if not faster than everybody that I knew, it hadn't really crossed my mind.
When you were born, your left hand had been caught in the umbilical cord in the womb,
so it didn't develop fully.
And I wonder about the conversation around that within the family.
Like, when did you notice?
How did your parents explain that to you?
And how did you feel about it?
Yeah, no one really knows.
It may well have been the umbilical cord.