It was British Athletics who first planted the idea in Maggie Alphonsi’s head to switch sports, England’s greatest female rugby star reveals. The 31-year-old, born with a club foot, had started out as a discus thrower at school and while training alongside paralympic athletes at Loughborough before the World Cup last summer was asked about her future.
Paula Dunn, British Athletics’ Paralympic head coach, felt Alphonsi had potential to excel in Rio and a strong case for classification as a paralympic athlete. But after 17 years of rugby at the highest level, culminating in lifting the World Cup trophy last summer, Alphonsi argued that she had pretty much trained her foot to function as a mainstream athlete. “My right foot is turned all the way in,” she says, gently lifting it, “but I’ve trained so well on it I probably wouldn’t be classified as a paralympic athlete any more.”
Still, it is extraordinary to listen to her catalogue the effects her club foot has had on her rugby career – from increased injuries to everyday training regimes – and all the more impressive to consider that the first female recipient of the esteemed Pat Marshall award for the outstanding rugby personality of the year has achieved so much, despite the added obstacle. “Throughout that time I’ve had many challenges because of my club foot,” she admits. “I’ve had many hamstring tears, back problems, a variety of different injuries on my right-hand side to do with my knee and it’s all because of the club foot. My training has always been slightly amended to everyone else’s and I’ve got slightly weaker calves as well. I had my foot corrected when I was young, but when I run I still slightly run on the inside of my foot. I’ve had to change my gait to suit it.”
Now, midway through the indoor athletics season, Alphonsi is doggedly pursuing the Olympics. It is not entirely unexpected. She once joked that had Lee Valley been built earlier, she might have become a professional athlete. Growing up in the 1980s at a time when her local track, Haringey Athletics Club, was overflowing with talent – from Sebastian Coe to John Regis – she would have had plenty of inspiration. At school she excelled at discus and shot put. But a teacher who played rugby for Wales captured her imagination and, despite being the daughter of a Nigerian mother who knew nothing about the sport, Alphonsi fell in love with the game.
Fast forward almost two decades and what makes an athlete at the very pinnacle of one sport decide to start all over again at the very bottom of another? “With rugby I feel like I reached the best I could get. It’s nice to be in a new sport and every time you train you think: ‘Ooh, I’m progressing further and really getting the technique.’” Alphonsi has been coy about how far she’s actually throwing since joining coach Tracey Quartey in November, refusing to measure her throws in training. At her first competition in February she finished fourth, posting a distance of 10.24m. Of course, that marker falls well below the world’s best – New Zealand’s Valerie Adams won the World Indoor title with 20.67m last year – while Britain’s No1 shot put thrower Eden Francis tops the domestic rankings with 16.94m this season. It is quite a gap to make up, and there have been times, Alphonsi admits, when she has wondered what she is doing.
“It was my second throw in the competition,” she remembers. “My first throw was really good, my second throw I just got too excited, I thought: ‘Yes. I’m going to throw it as far as I can’ and it went out of bounds and almost hit the judge. It went far – it just went far the wrong way. It was then that I wondered: ‘What am I doing?’ You have those moments in training where you do think: ‘Oh god, I am a real novice at this’ but then you’ll have your next throw and believe: ‘Actually, this is completely fine’. I talked to my coach about it and she said in the last five months what I’ve achieved is incredible, girls who have been throwing for four to five years are throwing what I’m throwing now.”
As if the personal doubts were not enough, there are also the recent allegations of widespread doping threatening to destroy the sport. Alphonsi nods. “Unfortunately in London 2012 the lady who won gold [Nadzeya Ostapchuk] was done for drugs,” she says, sorrowfully. “It’s all about changing the perceptions, that’s not my job or my focus, I’m just coming in to compete. But I’m fully aware that there’s been scandals throughout certain women’s throwing events. My priority is just about focusing on myself, and potentially being that role model to show that women’s throwing is a great spectacle.”
There is a sort of unshakeable confidence about Alphonsi, born of a woman who has achieved the unthinkable and made a career out of women’s rugby – a sport that for most of her career has been sidelined and even frowned upon. Alphonsi leaves rugby in its best ever state – with 20 players awarded central contracts before the sevens competition at Rio 2016 – and its highest profile in the mainstream media, and she is evangelical about wanting to do the same for women’s throwing. “Maybe that’s my role in coming into the world of athletics – to show people that throwing is a great sports event, it’s technical and good to watch. When I see a discus or shot put fly through the air I think it’s beautiful. I’m hoping I’m going to get all those rugby lovers following me and watching it. If I make it to the Olympics I like to think that anyone who follows rugby will be interested in following athletics. I like to think I could bring a new audience to women’s throwing.”
In competing in sports traditionally deemed unfeminine, Alphonsi has become an inspirational figurehead in the battle to challenge archaic attitudes around women and sport. “It’s a big discussion at the moment,” she nods. “Body image and how women are perceived in the world of sport. The campaign This Girl Can is brilliant, it really shows women that it’s good to look strong and physically fit. I’ve played what some people could perceive as being quite a male sport. What I feel really pleased about is that instead of saying: ‘Oh, she’s strong’, people have started to say: ‘Wow, she’s committed, she works really hard, she’s very good at her sport’. People are admiring, I go into schools and young girls say to me: ‘Wow, Miss, you’re so strong, what do you do?’”
Alphonsi admits it has been hard watching the rugby during the Six Nations and not being part of it. “There’s times, you know, watching your team in the Six Nations playing rugby, and you do think: ‘God, I miss that’ and it’s tough.” What does she miss most? “Singing the anthem to the crowd,” says Alphonsi. “Not many sports sing anthems, I’ve only just realised this. In athletics it’s only if you win gold.” It may take another Olympic cycle before Alphonsi is ready to top a major podium, but there’s a quiet determination about the World Cup winner that makes you think it would be foolish to underestimate her.