As soon as the javelin left Dan Pembroke’s hand, he knew it was a big throw. Halfway through the Paralympic F13 final in Paris, the Briton had recorded a distance of 71.15m, breaking Uzbekistan’s Aleksandr Svechnikov’s seven-year-old world record by 14cm.
“I got my eyes on that sight line and just nailed it,” says Pembroke. “I celebrated proper early and I was like: ‘Yeah, I’ve won the gold medal and got that world record!’”
Within moments, however, the unconfined joy vanished and reality quickly set in. The 33-year-old, who had just established a huge lead of around 10m over the rest of the field, suddenly saw much of that gap disappear as Iran’s Ali Pirouj – his biggest competitor and the man who finished second behind him at the Tokyo Games in 2021 – threw 69.74m.
“That shut me up,” Pembroke admits. “I thought his next throw could put me in second place, but I’d trained for this scenario.”
Under the guidance of John Trower, the man who coached Steve Backley to three Olympic medals and a world record, nothing was left to chance. In the weeks building up to Paris, Pembroke and his mentor worked religiously on visualisation and how to respond to different scenarios.
Dan Pembroke (Getty)
“We had these sessions where, in my head, I’d go through every part of six throws [the number taken by each athlete in the final],” Pembroke explains. “That’s the preparation of putting your bag down in the stadium, looking around you and seeing your competitors, what you’re going to feel like on the first throw, reacting if it goes wrong and much more. All these things were implanted in my head at the Paralympics and it helped me so much in the Stade de France.”
The hard work well and truly paid off. With his next throw, Pembroke put the outcome well beyond doubt with a remarkable 74.49m. No one got close.
“This was the one,” he says. “I never thought it’d be 74.49m. It was the greatest moment of my life.”
Throwing the javelin that far was extra special because it matched the kind of marks Pembroke recorded as a junior, able-bodied, athlete. At the age of six, he was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa – a rare genetic disorder that causes eyesight to worsen over time – and was told two years later by his parents that he would eventually go blind.
“That was a big thing to say at that point but it was the best thing they could have ever done,” he says. “It taught me that I haven’t got a long time with my vision, so if I wanted to do the things that I wanted to do then I needed to do them soon.”
Pembroke started javelin at school and subsequently joined Windsor, Slough, Eton & Hounslow AC. Within the space of a couple of years, he broke multiple age group records and became England under-20 champion. After setting a personal best of 75.89m in 2011, he knew that Olympic qualification for the London 2012 Olympics wasn’t totally out of the question but, at the 2012 Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire County Championships, he snapped the medial collateral ligament in his elbow. With that Olympic dream over, Pembroke decided to leave the sport and go travelling.
“I packed up a rucksack [and went] to Sardinia on my own, with a speargun, fishing net and camping essentials,” he says. “I’d rent a kayak out during the day and catch these little tuna. In the evenings, I’d light a small fire on the beach and cook the fish on them. For the first time, I was outside of a regimented training programme and felt free. I wanted more of that feeling so I spent the next four years seeing the world.”
Dan Pembroke (IPC)
It wasn’t until 2021, in fact, that Pembroke decided to return to javelin throwing, and accepted a place on the British Paralympic World Class Programme. He was classified in the F13 category – for athletes with severe visual impairment – and has since become a double Paralympic and world champion.
He only has 10 per cent of his vision now and is unsure how long it will take until he becomes fully blind. With the extra publicity that Paralympic gold brings, he wants to use it to raise awareness about visual impairments and is working on a film – which has already received grant money – to give others an idea of what he experiences on a day-to-day basis.
“If you looked at me, you’d think ‘that guy isn’t visually impaired’ and that’s a perception that I want to change,” Pembroke tells AW. “But if somebody is sitting two metres away from me and I look at one eye on their face, I can’t really see their other eye, only the bridge of their nose. What I do is scan an area and then my brain recognises everything around me.”
Dan Pembroke (Getty)
None of that is going to deter him from the pursuit of his goal to better that PB from his youth. In fact, he now believes a throw of 80m is not out of the realms of possibility. Already Pembroke’s mind has turned to the next Paralympics in Los Angeles and he has also undertaken a side project – on top of the WCP funding he receives – to help him get there.
“I’ve created a beer called ‘Paris Gold’,” says the AW Male Para Athlete of the Year, who grows hops on his allotment in Herefordshire. “After becoming Paralympic champion again, I’ve had breweries around the country contacting me, hoping to bring it out to a wider audience.
“I’ve teamed up with Siren Brewery in Berkshire and we’re taking it to the mass market. We want to pitch this idea to Aldi. The brewery said: ‘We’ll give you a percentage of the revenue and that will contribute to your training’. I’m marketing it as ‘every can sold is helping Dan towards LA 2028’.”
He knows what to do when he gets there.
» This feature first appeared in the December issue of AW magazine. Subscribe to AW magazine here, check out our new podcast here or sign up to our digital archive of back issues from 1945 to the present day here