Tanni Grey-Thompson

Carys Davina Grey was born in Cardiff with spina bifida. Her sister called her "tiny", which came out as Tanni, and the name stuck. She walked with callipers as a small child, but by seven she was using a wheelchair full time. Her parents refused to let the local authority send her to a special school, and she went to a mainstream comprehensive after a legal argument that took months.

She tried several sports before settling on wheelchair racing at 13. There was little money and less recognition in the sport then. She trained on roads around Cardiff and later at Loughborough, where she studied politics, and paid for her own racing chairs. At her first Paralympics in Seoul in 1988 she won a bronze in the 400 metres.

Over the next 16 years she won 11 Paralympic gold medals across distances from 100 metres to 800 metres, along with the London Marathon six times. The attention she received was not always kind. In 2000, after coming third in the BBC Sports Personality vote, she found there was no ramp to the stage and had to receive her award on the floor, an image that became a symbol of how far attitudes had to move.

She retired from racing in 2007 and was made a life peer in 2010. In the House of Lords she has spoken on welfare cuts, accessible transport and the treatment of disabled people, drawing on the years she spent being told what she could not do.