This is not the first time Ellie Challis has appeared on these pages.
When she was just five years old, the quadruple amputee appeared in the Daily Mail wearing prosthetic legs while running and competing with Oscar Pistorius, then the most famous face in Paralympic sport before his life took a very dark turn.
“My dad said he would give me £10 if I won the race,” recalls Challis, who Pistorius jokingly let win the 15-metre race. “I’d always wanted to run so I thought it was great. I was the smallest of the kids wearing prosthetics because they didn’t make them for kids. It’s normal now so it was nice to be a part of that.”
That day in 2009 also left a lasting impression on Pistorius, who used a Mail photograph of him with the Clacton-on-Sea girl as his Twitter profile picture, now X. But when the South African runner shot dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp four years later, Challis found herself caught up in a media storm. The world’s press wanted to know everything about the girl in the photo and what she thought about her former heroine being a murderer.
“Yeah, it was really bad,” says Challis, now 20. “Everyone wanted to know my opinion. I was too young at the time, so my parents had to deal with it. They tried to ignore everyone to protect me.”
Ellie Challis is heading into the 2024 Paralympics in Paris with a view to winning her first gold medal
The quadruple amputee’s first brush with fame came before her record-breaking feats.
The photographer who captured Pistorius and Challis together in London was Mail Sport’s Andy Hooper. Fifteen years later, he is again the man holding the camera for another photo shoot with Challis, but this time it is she who is the Paralympic star in the spotlight.
The British swimmer’s story is remarkable, regardless of her relationship to Pistorius. When she was 16 months old, she contracted meningitis and was given a five per cent chance of survival. She even “died” for two minutes after her heart stopped. “I always tell everyone that, it’s my little fun fact,” Challis says with a laugh. “But it sounds a bit scary. I was in a coma for three weeks and needed surgery. I was very lucky.”
Although Challis survived the meningitis, his legs were amputated above the knee and his arms below the elbow to save his life after sepsis set in. He spent another 17 days in hospital before returning home; his father, Paul, left work to become his full-time carer.
When she was three, she received her first pair of prosthetic legs, funded by friends and neighbors. Challis ran and played soccer in elementary school. But the movie Dolphin Tale, the story of a dolphin named Winter, who lost her tail at sea but learned to swim again after being fitted with a prosthetic limb, inspired her to start taking swimming seriously.
“I was learning to swim at the time, so that was one of the things that made it all seem possible,” Challis says. “We watched it and thought it was a fictional story, but in the end he told us it was true. We just knew we had to go to America to meet Winter. I’ve been there a few times and we still have a great connection with the Florida Aquarium.”
Challis was photographed alongside six-time Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius in 2009
The South African used the image as his X-rated profile picture, and it remains that way to this day.
Challis said he was caught up in the media storm after Pistorius shot and killed his girlfriend in 2013.
Another inspiration came from London 2012, when she went to watch athletes at the Olympic and Paralympic Games. “Seeing the whole stadium packed for Paralympic sport was crazy,” says Challis. Equally impactful was watching Ellie Simmonds win four medals in the pool on television in London. “It was the first time I saw her swim on television,” she says. “Ellie has been a huge inspiration to virtually every Paralympic swimmer in the world.
“Without her in 2012, I don’t think Paralympic swimming would be as big as it is now. I first met her in 2018 and took a photo with her. I still talk to her a lot and she’s very supportive.”
At just 13, Challis broke a British record that had stood for 13 years and then set a new world record in the same 50m breaststroke SB2 event two years later. She made her Olympic debut in Tokyo in 2021 aged 17 as the youngest member of ParalympicsGB’s 227-athlete squad, winning silver in the 50m backstroke S3 and finishing fourth in the 100m freestyle.
“Tokyo was a dream come true – not just winning the medal but the whole experience,” says Challis, who was nominated for the BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year award alongside football superstar Jude Bellingham and skateboarder Sky Brown.
As well as swimming, Challis is a qualified baker and studied baking and pastry making at university in Manchester, where she moved to train full-time in preparation for Tokyo, with the help of funding from the National Lottery.
She is also an expert snowboarder and could one day make the jump from the summer to the winter Paralympics. “At 14, I was the first British quadruple amputee to snowboard, which is crazy,” explains Challis. “It’s the opposite of swimming, which is why I love it. I’m so glad I have the support from Aquatics GB to do it. It’s another form of physiotherapy for me, because sitting in my chair, I have issues with really stiff hips. It’s just a hobby at the moment, but it’s one of my favourite things to do and I’m getting better every week. Who knows what I’ll do after swimming? No one has ever made the jump to snowboarding. We’ll see.”
Challis was inspired by ParalympicGB star Ellie Simmonds when she won gold in 2012
The 20-year-old claimed her own medal at the 2021 Paralympic Games.
For now, Challis has plenty to achieve in the pool. She already has 10 world championship medals, including three golds, but she wants to win her first Paralympic title in Paris. “I’ve improved a lot and there’s still a lot to do,” insists Challis. “I learned a lot in Tokyo. I experienced a lot of new things, so I’m happy with my performance there. But going into Paris I know a lot more than I can expect. I hope to come back with two medals.”
Challis is the only British swimmer in Paris competing in a category below S5, with S1 being the most severe disability. For her, inspiring young amputees to take up swimming is more important than her own results. “I’m the only one in the UK in a lower category,” she says. “It would be nice if I could make people realise what swimming can do for you and your body, how much it can help you, and fill those lower categories more. Those people are there, they just don’t know it.”
Ellie receives funding from the National Lottery, which raises over £30m a week for good causes, including sport funding. www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk