English Woman's Journal - Smith -- from shunning homework to boccia Paralympic gold

The chirpy 35-year-old Briton -- sporting dyed red and blue hair -- was speaking after he had won his opening pool match on Thursday, beating the semi-finalist from the Tokyo Paralympics, Jose Oliveira of Brazil, 5-2.

Boccia is one of two non-Olympic sports in the Paralympics -- the other is goalball -- and despite its Italian name it originated in Egypt around 5200BC.

French audiences would relate to it as it resembles the game of petanque and more globally, bowls.

Smith, who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy aged one, admitted boccia was a way out for him when he was a six-year-old schoolboy.

"It wasn't love at first sight, for sure," he said.

"I started playing boccia when I was at school, and basically it was an excuse to get me out of doing homework.

"And then I went to tournaments, and the school I went to was very keen on winning.

"If you didn't pick up a medal in something, you kind of felt a bit left out.

"Then I started winning in boccia, I became British champion at the age of 14. (I am) still the youngest ever British champion."

However, his aversion to homework dissipated when he started competing abroad and he found that unlike in Britain there were players capable of beating him.

"I started getting beaten, which was good for me," he said.

"From that sprang the challenge of trying to improve myself, because I knew I had the talent, but needed a bit of hard work to get to the level I am now.

"Players have inspired me along the way from other countries like Thailand, Brazil.

"All the players over the past, even Oliveira there, he's beaten me before.

"When he beats me, it's a great lesson for me to know, OK, how did he beat me?

"So tactics, or me not hitting it enough, or not getting a bit too ambitious too early. So those sort of things make me a better player."

- 'Grandfather's footsteps' -

Professionally Smith learned from his rivals but on an academic front he was inspired to take a degree in aerospace engineering due to his grandfather Charlie Smith, who died when he was 16.

"He was a sheet metal worker for the RAF (Royal Air Force) during the Second World War," said Smith.

"He wasn't very good at taking orders from his superiors, but he was very good at maths.

"So they kept him. And he got me into planes and stuff.

"He was doing the dust filters on the Merlin engines (used in Spitfires among other planes) for the desert and stuff."

Smith, who aside from individual gold in Rio and Tokyo won the team title in Beijing in 2008, said although he was good at physics and maths at school he found aerospace engineering came as a "nice mix between the two."

"It was going down my grandfather's footsteps a little bit," he said.

"But like him, I don't like being told what to do. So once I realised that a career in aerospace probably wasn't looking likely, I kind of went down my own path, down the boccia route.

"I became a full-time athlete."

Nevertheless Smith has not ditched his fascination with aeroplanes, World War II ones being his particular love.

"I'm still an avid aircraft lover," he said. "Anything to do with the technical stuff.

"YouTube channels are all on aircraft and stuff. I was watching a video about Swordfish this morning," he said, referring to the torpedo bomber that originated in the 1930s.

"So yeah, it shows you how sad I am!"

L.Ross--EWJ