For most elite sportspeople in Britain the Covid-19 lockdown is a temporary, if painful, episode. For Britain’s three-time wheelchair tennis grand-slam event champion and Paralympic silver medallist Alfie Hewett, coronavirus brings added anguish.
Mercifully for one born with a congenital heart defect that required surgery at six months, and a victim of rare hip abnormality Perthes Disease, Hewett’s physical health is not at issue. The torment is, however, real.
Following revisions to the wheelchair tennis classifications made by the International Tennis Federation and approved by the International Paralympic Committee last year, Hewett was advised that 2020 would be his last season in a sport that has shaped his life.
His ability to walk, though severely impaired, took him outside the new regulations. At 22 years old you can imagine the sense of devastation evinced, a situation compounded by a lethal pandemic that has already seen Wimbledon wiped from the calendar and the Olympic Games postponed.
The French Open has been rescheduled for September and the US Open hangs on to its 24 August start date for now, but neither can be confident of surviving. The hope is that those who qualified for the Tokyo Olympics will still be able to compete in 2021, but that has still to be confirmed by the ITF. So Hewett waits while what remains of his astonishing career is suspended in a state of wicked uncertainty.
“I’ve been keeping on a physical programme, watching matches and keeping that tennis brain active,” he says. “It is a strange period. As things stand, my career will have to finish at the end of the year. With this pandemic going on there is obviously a bigger picture. I just hope they will allow me and the other athletes affected to compete in the Games next year.”
Hewett first took to his wheelchair after being diagnosed with Perthes Disease, a condition that inhibits blood flow from the pelvis to the hip joint, at six years old. Successful treatment, which involves immediate wheelchair use to protect against load bearing on the legs, depends on early diagnosis. As a football-mad kid, Hewett ignored the early signs and played on with negative consequences in adulthood. Though walking is possible, Hewett is not mobile in the conventional sense and nowhere near athletic in any meaningful way while upright.
“I want to carry on competing for the foreseeable future, not just an extra year,” he says. “Obviously the ITF have a lot on their plate deciding what happens with Olympic qualification, classification, rankings, points systems, etc. Questions have been asked from my side whether this is going to be my final year. It is still unknown.”
Over and above the Olympic situation, there is a sense of injustice around the treatment of Hewett, and others similarly affected, for whom the able-bodied game is not an option. “It’s not fair,” he says. “I was allowed into the sport when I was eight or nine. There were certain rules and guidelines then. I have played for 13 years. I have had an unbelievable career. I’m proud of where I have got. There has been a lot of sacrifice and hard work. I wanted to get to the top and make it a full-time living. Just as I reach that point, these guidelines have come in and it has affected where I stand.”
What should be an uplifting story about a boy overcoming not one, but two chronic health conditions to carve his place in the world through wheelchair sport has turned into a political mess. Not only is Hewett denied a future, his achievements, which include two US Opens and a French Open singles title and five major doubles titles, plus two Paralympic silvers, might be construed by those of a cynical disposition as tainted.
“The decision makes you out to be a fraud almost,” Hewett says. “If you look at the top 10 there is such a range of disabilities, and everyone beats everyone. If it was clear that my disability was giving me an advantage and I was sweeping up left, right and centre you could argue maybe it wasn’t fair. But the truth is I have no advantage over other players. In a wheelchair my legs aren’t being used.”
Hewett’s account of his condition shines a harsh light on the rules changes. “Perthes varies from person to person,” he says. “The severity from the beginning depends on circumstances. As a six or seven year-old you don’t want to be told you can’t run around and play football. I loved playing football. I must have been undiagnosed for eight months to a year. My parents and friends thought I was whinging about a couple of bad slide tackles. But being on my feet and still running around was making the condition a lot worse. It just got to a point where I was in absolute agony. I collapsed. I couldn’t put any weight through my leg. An ambulance came and I was rushed to hospital. I came out of that in a wheelchair and my life changed from that moment.”
Understandably, Hewett is frustrated at the ruling. “They don’t understand what I’ve had to go through. I have had to come through a lot of adversity. I never dreamed of being a wheelchair tennis player when I was three of four years old. I wanted to be a footballer, then life throws this monster at you. I had to overcome that and all the mental and social struggles that go with it. I found disability sport. I played wheelchair basketball and tennis and created a job for myself. To make a living from a wheelchair sport is rare. We are so lucky in what wheelchair tennis has to offer and now it is being snatched out of my hand through no fault of my own.”
Hewett’s powerful testimony begs the question why the authorities cannot refine the regulations still further to create a category that would allow similarly affected athletes to continue in the sport. “I know what I felt when I first got in that chair. It gave me a new purpose in life. I would hate for a seven-year-old with Perthes today, or another disability, to be denied that opportunity because their condition no longer fits the criteria. It turned my life around. It has been one hell of a ride. That’s where it gets to me, the idea that it might prevent others from doing what I did. It’s not right.”