[00:00:00] Steve: I had no control. Everybody talking to me, telling me not to panic, to stay calm, try not to move. I have no idea that all I was trying to do was move, although my body wasn't showing it, I was completely panicked.

[00:00:15] Alex: Welcome to Stories of Men. Beneath the surface, I'm Alex Melia. Join me as we discover what it means to be a man in the modern era.

It's funny how life can change in an instant for better off or worse. The life paths that we follow and take for granted every day can be thrown into disarray in the blink of an eye. After university, Steve decided he wanted to travel around Europe with a spare pair of pants and a couple of beers in his bag.

He started out as a cleaner on a holiday result, and a few years later he'd become area manager overseeing 11 destinations in the south of France and Spain. He was proud of his work, making friends and loving life, but one day something happened that would change the trajectory of his life forever.

[00:01:12] Steve: It was my friend's birthday over in Germany, so I popped over to Germany to go and surprise them for their, their birthday. On the way there, I, I stopped at the butchers and I've got this lovely piece of steak in a bottle of wine and, um, I've got it all ready and all sorted, and I was carrying the meal out onto the, the balcony as I was carrying it.

You've got the threshold where the door is from indoors to outdoors. And I simply caught my foot on that threshold as I was carrying the plates. There was nothing wrong with the balcony. I had a rail. Everything was safe and as it should be. But just as I stumbled on this threshold, I just didn't have enough room to get my, my balance back.

And I went head first over the rail, and it wasn't very high. It was only the first floor. But as I fell, I landed on my bum while I was looking up and my head went backwards over my shoulders and with friends looking down over the edge of the balcony at me and the. Shouting, crying. Steve, are you okay?

You okay? I was doing everything that I could just to get some sort of response out my body. I was laying there completely conscious, but all of a sudden my body's got limp. I've got no pain, no feeling, no movement, no anything. And all I've got is my peripheral vision, and from where I am laying on the floor, everyone's standing up around me and I just, I felt so claustrophobic, just laying at their feet, not being able to get up, not being able to move.

I had no control. Everybody talking to me, telling me not to panic, to stay calm, try not to move. I have no idea that all I was trying to do was move, although my body wasn't showing it. I was completely panicked and all this noise of like just the feet shuffling on the floor around my, around my ears, and then after what seemed like a, a lifetime, but kind of been more than a few minutes, you've got the siren of the ambulance as it's arriving.

And I could hear it again closer and closer and closer. And then it, it stopped, the sirens stopped and that's when you know that they're there. And it was that moment that I can remember thinking, right, there's people here that are here to help me. These people now are here to, to get me through this situation.

And they've scooped me up off the floor and they've taken me off to the hospital. And the handover between the ambulance crew that came out to get me to the. The hospital staff, the doctors and nurses at the Cologne Hospital. Now my medical German is minimal. You know, I, I can't speak much German at all, but medical, German, I've got nothing.

But the way that they looked at each other, the way they looked at my paperwork, looked at me. Never underestimate body language. Never underestimate how much you can give away with the way that you look at somebody, because I couldn't understand a word of what they said, but I absolutely understood. That they had to save my life.

[00:04:02] Alex: So what actually happened to you afterwards in the hospital with the doctors?

[00:04:05] Steve: So once I was in hospital, in, in cologne and I was, um, first thing that they had to do was do a, do an operation. Um, I had broken my sick vertebrae. As I fell, my head went backwards over my shoulders and my sick vertebrae came out of lion.

And as it did, so it cut through my spinal cord. And as I'm sure you and everyone listening knows your spinal cord is part of your nervous system, it sends the messages from your brain to your body and your body to your brain. So if you want your legs to move, the message starts in your head, goes down to your leg, and it moves well.

The way that I cut through my spinal cord, it quite simply doesn't reach my leg. I've got a gap now in my spinal cord. It's the same as turning the light on. The light switch works, the light works, but if you cut the wire between the two, They're not gonna talk to each other. They're not gonna work together.

They actually done an operation where they cut a piece of my hip bone out, so they, they cut it like the sick vertebrae and they slid it into place. And so my neck now goes vertebrae, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, hip, 7, 8, 9. It's amazing, isn't it? And then once I was made stable, In Germany, they flew me back to, to England to a hospital called Stoke Mandeville, which specializes in this sort of injury and spinal injuries in particular.

And I can remember getting there and it was such a, an eye-opening experience being there, and it was like being back at school, but now it wasn't lessons like science, English, and math. So I had to have lessons of how to get dressed. How to hold a knife and fork when my hands don't work properly and I've got no balance how to get in and outta the shower or the bath.

And I hated it. You know, my friends knew I wasn't happy, my family knew I wasn't happy and they had a big meeting. How are we gonna motivate Steve? What are we gonna do to get Steve through this injury? And the first thing that that they said was sport. It's the only thing that got me through my school.

Only thing that got me a job. And they wanted to use sport to get me through my time in hospital. And so I went down towards a game of of wheelchair rugby. Now, for those of you listening that haven't seen wheelchair rugby, it's a full contact sport where people in wheelchairs go around knocking each other outta chairs.

But at the time, I was very nervous. I was brand new to being in a wheelchair. I was trying to learn how to stay in mind, let alone try and knock people outta theirs. And I went down to watch this game at wheelchair rugby, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. These people, they were confident, they were driven, they were motivated, they were aggressive.

And I couldn't believe for a second that they had been through what I'd been through. And then I started realizing that some of them couldn't move their hands. Some of them didn't even have hands to move. And I thought to myself, who have I had to be sitting here scared and nervous and worried about me and my future?

When there's people in this world with far less ability than me, trying so much harder, and they put everything in perspective, and I went back to hospital not going through these lessons because I had to, but because I wanted to. I realize now that these lessons were a stepping stone from being the person that I was there in that moment to be unable to find the confidence.

And the ways in life to be more like these athletes. I was watching playing wheelchair rugby, and I wanted to be them. I wanted that drive, that determination. These people have now become my role models and not because of their injuries. Forget that this wasn't about disability. This was about their passion for life being the person that they wanted to be.

They wasn't scared and nervous about being in a wheelchair or other people's perceptions of them. They were being themselves and they was being very happy. About being themselves, and I wanted to find that in myself.

[00:08:11] Alex: It's really interesting that you talk about how vicious these guys are because you have this idea in your head is, well, they're in a wheelchair.

They'll be a lot more cordial with each other, but. At the end of the day, does it, it's not about able bodied and disabled, it's about being a man, being competitive, and whether, you know, whether you're in a wheelchair or not. I'm gonna win at all costs. So they don't care about knocking each other outta their wheelchairs.

And w it just shows that men and men, at the end of the day in, in competitive sports,

[00:08:40] Steve: well that was one of the things that that bothered me the most was in hospital. Everything is flat, safe, and easy, and you are surrounded by. Nurses and doctors, physios and professionals that are there to make sure you are okay.

Now, I had been traveling and working abroad since the age of 19, and I had not spent much time with anyone making sure I was okay or making sure that I was all right for years. You know, I'd done well with my work. I'd spent a lot of time living independently and particularly as a big brother. I'm the oldest of of four brothers, and I'd spent a lot of my life making sure other people was okay, and I didn't grow up in a flat, safe, easy environment, and I didn't want to live in a flat, safe, easy environment with or without a wheelchair.

And it was going down and watching these people play this sport and looking at them and realizing that they're not letting themselves be defined by their chair. They might be in a wheelchair, but that is not who they are. And it was there and then that I realized that I didn't need to be Steve Brown in a wheelchair.

Yes, I might be in a wheelchair and it might be something that I need for the rest of my life, but it was when I met them that I realized that he didn't need to define me.

[00:10:04] Alex: Steve Brown, aggressive competitive athlete.

[00:10:07] Steve: Yeah. Well, I suppose so, but, but it was, that was the amazing thing was. It doesn't grow overnight.

You know, confidence and all of that kind of thing isn't, isn't something that you find quickly. You know, it took me maybe five months to go down to watch the game, and I can remember it was two days after I left hospital and I went down for my first training session, a wheelchair, rugby. And you know what it's like you meeting new people.

You're worried about if you're gonna fit in, you're worried about, if you're gonna make a fool of yourself, you're gonna say the wrong thing, wear the wrong clothes. I had all those worries and hundreds and hundreds more, believe me, and I got down there and within minutes I realized that they weren't just great athletes, they were great people, and they'd done everything they could to put those worries away.

They knew I was scared and nervous, and they had so much empathy and so much understanding for my situation that. It wasn't about the sport, it was about being surrounded by those people and the sport was just a massive plus. And it's funny, isn't it? You know, time marches on, things change and then tw up.

Being captain at London, 2012, of the individuals that helped me through unquestionably the hardest part of my life, and for them to trust me to be their captain. What is arguably the biggest moment of their life was something that I never expected. It wasn't about being captain of the country, it was about being captain of these 11 individuals that had helped me become the person that I am.

[00:11:48] Alex: Did you think the training of being the oldest brother and being the kind of the person that the, your three brothers looked up to, did that help in any way in terms of leading all of these men in the Olympics? Paralympics,

[00:12:02] Steve: Well, maybe. I mean, I've always been very sporty. Before my injury, I used to play a lot of football, cricket, rugby.

I've always enjoyed sport, and I think I've always been quite a sociable person. Now, without doubt, my injury and ended up in a wheelchair was a huge knock to be in that person, to be in the older brother, you know, I was, For a long time after my injury, I didn't feel like a, a big brother. I felt almost like a woman burden to the family.

All of a sudden, instead of me being able to help out my brothers and be in there to, to look after them, and now all of a sudden I was the one that needed the help. I was the one, but I didn't wanna be that person. I didn't want to be the person that needed all the help. I didn't want be the person that everyone was looking after or making sure was okay.

Those first. A couple of months of being in a wheelchair. You're fighting with embarrassment, you're fighting with anxiety, you're fighting with all these what ifs. What if this happens? What if that person says something? You are fighting with so many dilemmas in your head that I don't think I'd have got over those as quickly if or if at all, if it wasn't for going down and starting playing wheelchair rugby.

Wheelchair rugby gave me an outlet and surrounded me with the right people to move forwards in life. Um, I could have easily sat indoors watching daytime tv, feeling sorry for myself, and quite honestly, I can understand why people do that. In any area of life, in any walk of life, everyone's placed with hurdles and challenges and becoming reclusion, sitting in and worried about them, letting them go through your head is such an easy thing to do.

Unless you've got those outlets, unless you've got those pathways, unless you've got that support and wheelchair rugby gave me those outlets, pathways, and support to overcome those worries and fears.

[00:14:08] Alex: The fact that you had looked after protected your brothers all those years, why do you think it was difficult for you to get help from them?

Well,

[00:14:17] Steve: you have this sort of sense of masculinity, don't you? You have this sense of being the big, strong person and, you know, I didn't, don't think I went through school as the, the big alpha male. I don't think I've even gone through sport as the the big alpha male. But what I've done is gone through life.

Capable. It's not always about being the strongest, the fastest, the smartest, but it's about being capable. And I've always been capable. I've always got through situations, I've always managed through situations. And when I was first injured, I didn't feel capable, but time as a funny way of healing, doesn't it?

And, and now, although my situation is vastly different, And does give me some very obvious physical and maybe some less obvious mental challenges on a day-to-day basis. I've gone back to feeling like I'm a capable person again. Um, I feel like I have got a situation where I can be Big brother. I do feel like I can go into a room and manage the people that are, are in it.

Whereas when you first leave hospital, you just want the world to swallow you up. You just wanna hide away. It's, it's, it's very hard to get over that embarrassment of a, a wheelchair and, you know, it still rears its ugly head. There's still some situations where I feel maybe a little inadequate. There are situations where embarrassment can still set in.

Um, and it's not, you know, it's not all sunshine and roses, but what I've learned through sport is how to deal with those situations All the time I was looking for those medals. I was concentrating on nothing but my sport. But I realize now how much sport has taught me about being able to work under pressure, being prepared for situations, being able to, uh, make a plan for, you know, for a sport is the same way as making a plan.

For life. I feel now that I am a more comfortable, well-rounded person through sports, and I think that it's the skills that I learned through sport that I didn't realize at the time that have now helped me become a more rounded person.

[00:16:40] Alex: You played so many sports as a kid. I'm just fascinated by the fact you chose wheelchair rugby when you could have chosen so many other spots.

Because when we think about rugby, we think of, oh, that's what Alpha Males play. That's what the big strong boys play.

[00:16:53] Steve: Yeah, definitely. There is something to be said about that. I mean, wheelchair rugby is the only contact or full contact wheelchair sport there is where you know, oh, I love it. People going around knocking each other outta chairs.

Wheelchair rugby is very often described as chess with violence. You know, it's a very tactical game, and what I really liked was the tactics of it, you know? And if you are smart and you are tactically good, They don't get to knock you out of a chair. They don't, you know, it's not, it's not, um, all about brute force.

There are some smarts and some set plays and tactical stuff within wheelchair rugby. In a world where people have quite low expectations, I think as a role of people in wheelchairs, um, people with disabilities, um, how hard they can push themselves or what they're capable of, I think that wheelchair rugby, Completely turns that on its head.

It surprises people when they watch wheelchair rugby. When I was working towards those medals, I didn't train less hard than any able bodied Paralympian. I watched what I ate. I watched my sleep regime. I went to the gym. I had personal instructors. I had physios, dieticians, sports and strength conditioning coaches.

You know, the work that I put in isn't any less hard than any able-bodied athlete. The only difference is, is I've only got a third of my body that I can work on. But we had a saying in the, in the sport, you know, I'll want that one third a hundred percent. There's no excuses for that. One third not to be firing on all cylinders.

Yeah. You can't move your legs. Right. Let's draw a line under that. Scratch that. We don't need to worry about your legs. But what you can move, what you can achieve has gotta be at a hundred percent.

[00:18:43] Alex: I'm always fascinated by the directions, the paths people take in life and how that can define them. And what, for the fact that they went down this avenue.

Just imagine if they'd gone down this avenue. Who would Steve Brown the man be today if he didn't have sport as a vehicle?

[00:19:02] Steve: Yeah, see, I, I often think about this, and I know what you're saying about pathways and roots, but you make a million decisions a day and each one of them shapes who you're gonna be.

Um, the food you eat would cha make a difference to your energy levels and, uh, your, your body mass. Uh, the amount of sleep that you have. You know, every decision, waking up with your alarm or pressing snooze. Five times in the mornings will shape you. And if you're gonna be somebody that's reliable on on time, or somebody that's gonna be late and underprepared, I would like to think that within life, within what I've done through sports, with what I've done with my career, or even at school, I've always been reasonably.

Successful. I've always, I've always worked hard. I've never been work shy. I don't think that, um, I've ever been the top of the pile at anything. And I'm certainly not, um, naive enough or modest enough to, to think that I, I have been, I don't think that I've ever been some sort of overachiever, but I do think, and what I can say with, with a little bit of pride is I've always tried heart.

And I'm, I'm comfortable saying that cause I believe it. I know that I don't like letting people down. I don't, I know that I don't like looking back at the end of the day and having any regret or I could done this, tried harder, I'm honest. How much putting achieve.

[00:20:37] Alex: I mean, even though we're just connecting online, and you talked before about body language, your non-verbals and your energy, it comes across as you're very much a go-getter with, with whatever you do.

So whether you would've actually chosen a different kind of pursuit, it's clear that you probably would've absolutely gone for it. And, and, um, yeah, that, that definitely very much comes across. I'm fascinated about the interplay between you and your three brothers. You are the oldest. How did the relationship change?

Where was your standing in that group of four brothers? Where did it change afterwards?

[00:21:11] Steve: So I had my injury at 24 years old, and my youngest brother at the time was going through his GCSEs. Uh, my next brother up was going through his A Levels and I can remember feeling so guilty with mom and dad both coming over to Germany to come and make sure I was okay and taking my parents' attention away from my two brothers who were right there and then sitting there.

The exams that are gonna shape 'em for. Their careers and their their futures. And I can remember just how guilty I felt worried about that and thinking about this isn't fair of of me, it's their big brother to be taking my parents' attention away as such an important time of their life. And then when I came back from.

Being in Germany to stoke Mandeville, of course, on a stretcher, and I'm laying down and I'm being wheeled into the hospital by the ambulance staff. My two youngest brothers were both there to greet me at the the hospital. And I can remember just having this overriding sense of, of guilt and embarrassment, you know, oh my God, I'm their big brother and I'm being willed in on a trolley.

By, by the ambulance staff. There's just this white blanket over the top of me. I'm able to move. I'm able to, to sit up and give them a hug knowing how much of a difference my injury was already having an impact to making to my family. You talk about this, you, you have an injury like, like I sustained. You know, it doesn't just affect you, but it affects the people around you.

And right from day one, I could see that and I could feel that by the way, that my parents were spending their attention across their four, their four sons, and then beyond there as well. While I'm in hospital, mom and dad are coming up every day to come and see me. Meaning that, They need to think about, well, what are they gonna leave for me brothers to eat in the evening?

And, you know, we're, we're a family that used to sit around the table every night and share, share stories and break bread together. And, and now I'm interrupting that part of family life as well. I come home from hospital and now my brothers are there and they're helping me with getting in and out the car.

They're helping me with shopping, they're helping me with getting things clean and tidy. Dynamics changed so much, and then as I started to find my own confidence, again, started being able to be a little bit more independent. You gotta remember that, you know, e everything from when I was first injured and I was effort to have help in the shower and getting dressed from the nurses.

It's not like that forever. I'm now in a situation where I. Completely capable of getting myself showered. I'm completely capable of get myself dressed in the morning and when I first injured, was getting in out car and putting my wheelchair together and take minutes in. You know, it doesn't even take me a minute.

All those. Um, small wins. Those small gains, those shaving a little bit of time off here or there on different activities or, um, the moment when you are getting yourself dressed for the first time, you start to realize that things are getting better. There isn't, although it's an uphill, um, struggle and there is lots of upheveal struggles or those first early days of being injured, those struggles do become easier both physically and mentally.

And it was as I was becoming more confident in myself, that I was becoming more confident in my position again as a big brother. And now there's lots of things, you know, my brothers have all got kids of their own. Um, you know, I haven't got any kids, um, of my own, but my brothers have all got. Nieces and nephews now that I, I help look after and I help spending time with and I can't play football with them like my brothers can.

And I spend my time now not playing football or climbing trees, but I take him out birdwatching, for example, we grab some binoculars and a bird book and we go out for a nice country drive. And, um, it's a chance me to interact with them, speak to them. We start talking about what they're up to at school and, and with that, while we're out actually watching the birds, so I'm getting some English and maths into their day, they write down what they see and they're Italian off, how many of them they've seen, and they get excited, so excited to get back and tell their mom and dad what they've been, what they've been up to.

[00:26:12] Alex: I like this idea of this contrast between taking your nephews and nieces out, bird watching, and then the next minute I can almost imagine them watching you doing wheelchair rugby, trying to knock some guy outta his wheelchair. And they see both sides of their

[00:26:24] Steve: uncle. Yeah, he is, he is funny. I mean, they see me obviously around the house.

Um, when I take him out for the day and I get them in, I into their, their seats and I make sure that they're belted into the car and then they see me getting out of. My chair into the car and taking my wheelchair apart and getting all that in the car. And there's always questions from them. There's always questions about, um, so why can't you walk?

Or, so can you tell me again about why you are in a wheelchair and that curiosity? And I do everything I can to feed it. I think it's right that kids ask questions. I think it's right that, that anybody that wants to know anything asks, you know, I know it sounds silly, but I love learning. And, um, I love encouraging other people to learn as well.

[00:27:10] Alex: Completely agree. And I'm, I love the idea of meeting people who are multifaceted, well-rounded. They are the most interesting dynamic people to me. I wanted to ask you, Steve, what would the Steve of 2022 say to 24 year old Steve? My

[00:27:26] Steve: injury now, you know, it's 17 years ago and I've, I've developed a lot. Over at that time, uh, some of it through sports, some of it through family dynamics, through friends and different opportunities that life brings you.

And hindsight's a wonderful thing, isn't it? You know, I can remember seeing my careers advisor at school, that person who's meant to fill you with all that motivation and determination to being a person you want for the future. And I can remember gonna see him and I told him that I wanted to be a sports person.

He says, Steven, people like you don't end up being a sportsperson. He wasn't talking about my ability as a sportsperson, he was talking about my attitude, um, how I, you know, didn't turn up at training if I didn't want to. I didn't think about who washed my shirts. I just didn't expected them clean. And then I went back a few weeks later and I said, you know what?

I wanna be like David Edinburgh. I love my wildlife. Grew up watching the trials of life and all that kind of thing. I always talk about how my dad. Introduced me to the wildlife on my doorstep, Chris Packham and the really wild show introduced me to Great Britain, and then David Attenborough showed me the world and I wanted to explore that world.

My careers advisor again said, Steven, people like you don't end up being like David Attenborough. The two things that I wanted to do, now I do both a work as a wildlife presenter and I've played sport at the highest level for my country. Who was E to tell me what I was capable of? Who was E to tell me where my ceilings were?

And I realize now that I had the potential to do these things because I've done them. You know, it is if somebody knocked on my door after my injury, when I was sitting in, in my room watching daytime tv, feeling nervous and scared, and said, oh, by the way, Steven, if you pull your finger out, you might be, um, captain of your country for a wheelchair rugby, and you can be a wildlife presenter.

And you would've this moment of like disbelief you wouldn't believe him, but. Your outcome is made up by the daily decisions you make. Now, I'm not ever gonna sit there and tell anyone you can achieve anything you put your mind to. Cause. Well, quite simply, that's not true. You sit there and you talk about, um, oh, you can be whoever you want to be.

You can be whatever you want to be. Now that's, that's not always true. We can't all be astronauts. We simply can't. We can't all be. Brain surgeons, you just simply can't all do every, everything we want to do. But what you can do is give yourself the best opportunities to become who you want to become, to be what you want to be.

And I would just tell my younger self now, Steven, it's, it's the daily decisions you make that will shape you. Who to, there's no, there's no moments in life that are life-changing moments in the sense of. Your character. There's no life-changing moments in the sense of you growing into a well-rounded person.

And everyone talks about your percentages, your grades, your um, you know how well you've come in under budget in, in business. When was the last time somebody said to you, do you know what your people skills are off the chart? Or when was the last time somebody said to you? You know, your attention to details second to none.

You can't work in a team if you haven't got people skills. You, you can't learn if you haven't got attention to detail. They're the fundamental things that make you who you're, but no one recognizes them. No one compliments them, but they're the things you need first. You need to be reliable, to be trustworthy, to be able to work in a team and have attention to detail.

If you are gonna go on to achieve anything, start with the fundamentals. Start with being trustworthy. Start with being respectful. Start with being honest, not just whether the other people, but with yourself. And the rest of it'll develop. The rest of it'll grow because then you'll find hunger, you'll find determination, you'll find confidence.

And when you've got those things, You can start worrying about the nitty gritty of the direction you wanna go in.

[00:31:42] Alex: I think it's fair to say that at points in our life, we absolutely take things for granted that we do almost automatically every day, whether it's getting dressed, brushing our teeth, taking the bins out, it takes a really strong person to go back to square one, and not only to do that, but actually to excel afterwards as well.

As people, we don't necessarily want to go backwards to then move forwards. Again. I know I certainly don't, but I've realized that sometimes in life it's necessary, even though it's frustrating and time and energy consuming. I did some research on wheelchair rugby, and what's fascinating about it is that it's the only full contact wheelchair sport.

I almost feel like you can liken it to chess, but with violence. Why did this sport appeal to Steve over the others that he could have chosen from? Maybe it's a sport that allows men with high levels of testosterone to get their adrenaline fix from seeing videos about wheelchair rugby. It's a brutal sport.

You can almost liken it to men going into war and as perhaps it's the thrill of the fight as well. Interestingly enough, wheelchair rugby at its inception was called murder ball. I find it fascinating. A sport for men with a disability or a vulnerability had such a hyper-masculine, aggressive name, and now it's just nicknamed murder ball.

Steve is absolutely a go-getter and has used what happened to him as fuel. He's achieved things as a TV presenter, as a wheelchair rugby player, and a storyteller that people could never have thought possible of him. He's never let his disability define him. If something challenging happens to us in life, and the roots in which you want to go down is uphill, maybe that was the route that you were always meant to be on.