When Sophie Christiansen was born, premature and with cerebral palsy, she was not expected to survive. However immediately, at 24, she has just won three glorious gold medals at the ParalympicsSophie Christiansen has just heard we desire to capture a photo of her. “Well I’m not looking very glamorous, am I?” She looks at Pippa, her publicist/helper/dresser/bodyguard. “You’ll have to aid with my hair,” says the triple gold medal-winning equestrian before manoeuvring herself into her diasability scooter and whizzing across the media lounge.We’re at Team GB House, just across the road from the Olympic park, where Britain’s medallists come to be feted. As it happens, her friend and fellow equestrian, Natasha Baker, is being interviewed about her second gold medal win. “Tash!” Christiansen shouts with delight, and starts singing along to Spandau Ballet’s Gold. The interviewer spots Christiansen. “And I do believe we have Sophie in the house,” he announces. A huge roar follows. Her face splits into a smile of pure joy.Christiansen is still only 24, and she’s a five-age Paralympic gold medallist. “An ancient woman!” she says. Her tale is astonishing. She was born two months premature with cerebral palsy. From a desperate commence, things got worse. She had a fit and then suffered from jaundice, blood poisoning, and a collapsed lung. Oh, and she had a heart attack. Hardly any expected her to survive.However she didn’t just survive, she thrived. By six she was riding horses, and excelling at college. At 16 she won a bronze at the Athens Paralympics in the most disabled category of dressage. In Beijing, at 20, she won two golds and a silver. And immediately she’s topped that.Her body is floppy, her muscles spasm involuntarily, her speech is slurred, and she is utterly lovely – amusing, gobby, brainy, heroic. She tells me about her background – her teacher parents, younger brother Alex, how they grew up near Ascot. Ah, I affirm, so that clarifies the horses. “No. Pure coincidence. In circumstance my mum is allergic to horses.” She pauses. “I just took it up to annoy her.” She creases up, laughing. Perhaps the most miraculous body is that, despite struggling so much to control her body, she has excelled in a sport that is all about perfect control. “Yes, precision,” she says, precisely. Dressage is also known as horse ballet – two-legged and four-legged partner walk and trot to music in perfect age and rhythm.How does she manage it? “Dressage comes from the French ‘dresser’, which method to train and that’s what it’s about; training the horse. So we train my horse to do what he’s suppposed to do – no affair what I’m doing. Rio knows he just has to walk in the fair rhythm and stay relaxed. Sometimes due to my disability I do give the incorrect signals, however he’s trained to nearly ignore that.”Rio is bigger known as Janeiro. He has two names – a formal competition designation, and a nickname for intimates. In this Paralympics, the pair have improvised brilliantly with the accompanying music – as well as Land of Hope and Glory and Pink Floyd, their routine included Huge Ben’s chimes and a quotation from Shakespeare. “I’m quite into my music. I go to a abundance of gigs.” What’s her favourite piece in the routines? “Another Brick in the Wall. It was quite ironic since I’ve got a master’s degree in maths.”Why’s that ironic? “Since it’s: ‘We don’t demand no education.’ And I used it since I hope the Paralympics will educate human beings in disability, and also inspire them to go outside and achieve their dream, no affair how dense it is.”At times, she says, it has been very dense. Her parents fought for her to go to a mainstream college with a special unit attached. They were absolutely fair, also, she says. It gave her the best of both worlds – support and the chance to integrate. Still, integrating wasn’t simple. I tell her that when I was a minor I went to a special college, and the able-bodied pupils were horrible to those with cerebral palsy. She nods. “I reckon every kid goes through a bit of that, disabled or able-bodied.” A bit of what? “A bit of what I suppose you’d call bullying.”However isn’t it different if the bullying is about your cerebral palsy?”Yes. However I didn’t get that much designation-calling. Making friends was the most dense body for me. I was quite shy since of my speech. Also at lunch I didn’t have much age to go outside and play since it took me longer to eat. Until GCSEs I didn’t have many friends.”Going to Athens for the Paralympics in 2004 changed everything. She came back, she says, a different person. “Since I won a bronze medal at such a young age I had to talk to a abundance of media, do a abundance of interviews, and it really brought me outside of myself. I had to become less self-conscious, and after that, at sixth form, I had a fantastic friend.”Are human beings with cerebral palsy stereotyped? “I reckon we used to be.” In what path? “That we’d just stay at house doing nothing. I still get it immediately.” She laughs, points her index finger to her head and makes a screw-loose motion. “Since of my speech human beings reckon I’m not all there. Some human beings come up and commence talking through my friend to me, and I am like, ‘Excuse me, I am here.’ When they reckon I’m mentally disabled, I try to drop in the conversation that I got a first-class masters degree in maths.”Was she always a mathematical genius? “I always liked maths! I wouldn’t call myself a genius. It didn’t come simple to me. The key is I employment very dense in everything I do.”Has she got a favourite equation? “Fermat’s theorem,” she answers instantly. “Xn + Yn = Zn. I like the tale behind it. Fermat was a French mathematician from, I reckon, the 17th century. You may have to check your facts on this. [She's fair, of direction.] And he claimed to have proved the theorem. He wrote it down in a textbook that he’d proved it, however no one could really find his proof, so for centuries mathematicians have been trying to prove it to see whether he really did prove it. Then a hardly any years ago it was finally proven, by a guy named Andrew Wiles.”As she clarifies, I’m staring at the three gold medals encircling her neck. She looks magnificently bling – the Liz Taylor of the Paralympics. What does it feel like to wear them all at once? “Heavy,” she complains. “No, it’s the most incredible feeling ever. Normally I reckon I’m just me, I just do what I do. However when everybody else acknowledges it, it comes back that I have achieved something special.”Isn’t it ridiculous winning three golds? Yes, she says, in a path, however that was the target she locate herself. “I knew my horse was capable of it. It was just down to me to get it outside of him.” Who deserves the medal more, her or Rio? “Half and half. He has been the perfect partner for me. I couldn’t have wished for a bigger horse.”However they had a tough commence, and just being selected for the Paralympics was a struggle. “At the end year, my ancient horse Rivaldo went lame the day before we were meant to go to the Europeans. A couple of weeks later he got place down. I’d already got Rio a couple of months before as my backup, however then I had to bring him on and form a partnership much quicker than I had intended to.”Much though she felt she was riding well, the results were disappointing. So she looked at the imaginable reasons. “And I reckon the main body was that I was so desperate to get to the Paralympics, and my desperation was transferring through to Rio in competition. So I worked really dense with my psychologist.”And the employment paid off. She says she has had the most fantastic hardly any weeks, and has never been involved in anything like this before – the crowds, the enthusiasm, the path disabled human beings have been empowered and embraced.What’s most surprising, I affirm, is that this has happened in a megalopolis where disabled human beings are virtually invisible since facilities for them are so poor.She nods, and looks at Pippa. “I’m not certain if I’m allowed to give my belief on this, however I’m going to anyway. Public transport has improved with the games since there were so many volunteers encircling to place outside ramps and stuff.” However she says, normally, it’s nothing like this. “I’ve been stranded by myself on a train many times with no one … much if I textbook it, which you have to do 24 hours in advance. So you can’t be spontaneous. Human beings are fantastic, if they see you’re stuck anywhere, they’ll come and aid you.” However that’s human beings, not systems, I affirm. “Yeah, yeah, I’m getting there! However access is horrendous in London, and we’re meant to be the earth leader in everything. It’s rubbish.” If she were a politician, what would she desire to do for disabled human beings? “Well, the Paralympics has improved London transport in terms of the number of helpers. However in terms of actual physical access, they haven’t done anything. I went to Vienna at Fresh Year and their underground system was incredible. The tube would come up, the platform would level with the carriage and a small ramp would come outside of the carriage. It really place London to shame.”What does she reckon about the circumstance that we’re celebrating disability, and yet at the same age the administration is looking to divide disability benefits? “From my mark of view, I’ve got a job immediately [as a statistician]. However getting that job was really dense. With my first-class masters degree, I wanted to get a high-flying job in the Megalopolis. And I went to loads of interviews and finished up thinking, this isn’t going to employment. Firstly, I wouldn’t be able to live in London since of access, and secondly, the huge companies weren’t willing to give me a bit of extra aid. For example, I couldn’t go on a placement for a week in Edinburgh since I needed to capture a carer with me.”The body is, she reckons, businesses would gain if they employed more disabled human beings. “The common feeling among the employees would be, ‘Well, if they can do it, we can also.’ So much if I might be slower to do the actual physical job, it would motivate others to do their employment.” So, other workers would affirm, ‘Well if somebody disabled can constitute a excellent job of it, so can I’? “Yes.” She giggles at her fabulously un-PC theory. “Well that’s my belief.” What does she reckon about the circumstance that Atos, which sponsors the Paralympics, is also the corporation the administration has appointed to weed outside disability claimant fraudsters? Another knowing smile. “I don’t reckon I can answer that! I don’t know a abundance about that tale.” Has she come across such cheats? “No. I haven’t seen it.”Gaze, she says, the Paralympics have already changed so much, and immediately it’s up to everybody to build on that. “I’m still in a bit of a bubble. I don’t reckon it will hit me just how much we’ve affected the nation until I get outside of here.”One body is for certain, though, she’s going to have plenty to occupy her – the statistician job, training for her following dressage championship, and immediately campaigning. As Pippa helps her on to her scooter, Christiansen waves a palm at me – a farewell and a promise.”I’ll be outside talking to politicians about all this!”Paralympics 2012: equestrianEquestrianismParalympicsGB medalsParalympicsGBParalympics 2012Simon Hattenstoneguardian.co.uk © 2012 Twitter News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Employ of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
DOWNLOAD: Star Trek: The Original Series