DYSLEXIA
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Me and my health: Steve Redgrave

by Graham Bridgstock

Olympic oarsman Sir Steve Redgrave, 39, was last week awarded a Lifetime Achievement in the Laureus World Sportsman of the Year awards. He is the only person ever to have won gold medals at five consecutive games, achieved despite diabetes, colitis and lifelong dyslexia.

He lives with his doctor wife Ann, 41, and children Natalie, nine, Sophie, seven, and Zak, three in Marlow, Buckinghamshire.

Dyslexia was an embarrassment at school. At ten, I still had problems reading and writing. And children can be cruel when they discover that you are different.

I did the same subjects as everyone else but found it hard to keep up, and always knew I wasn't going to pass my 11-plus.

Yet because I was big and strong I was never picked on. Rather than take the mickey, people would try to help me, so I was able to get by reasonably well.

The headmistress at the school - only a minute or two from where I live now - gave me private reading lessons in her office. And I was allowed to abandon French to do extra English. Still, at times, even now I see letters upside-down or back-to-front.

It's difficult for people who can read to understand how frustrating it is. It doesn't mean you lack intellect. Quite the reverse. Agatha Christie and Leonardo da Vinci were dyslexic.

There's no reason why dyslexics can't read. It just takes them four or five times longer than everyone else.

Of course, now that I have children, I want to make sure they can read and write well. I spend a lot of time reading to them and, as a result, my own reading has improved, too.

The youngest of three, I weighed in on March 23, 1962, at Amersham General Hospital at 8lb 6oz. Now I'm 161/2 st and would ideally like less midriff. Otherwise, I'm happy the way I am.

My wife Ann is 6ft and we have a king-size bed. At 6ft 5in I sleep with my size 12 feet over the end.

My dad, a retired builder, is the same shape as me but a mere 6ft 2in and lighter. He was 70 last year and still has a good crop of hair, but I've been losing mine since 1988.

Mum will be 70 this year - and her mother lived to 96. I am aiming for 120.

My grandfather (a cousin of Sir Michael Redgrave) was 71 when he came down with diabetes. I was 35. The first telltale sign was a terrible thirst after training, which I could only quench with pint after pint of blackcurrant juice.

When we went on training camps overseas, we were given dipsticks to test our urine for dehydration. I had some lying around the house so I tested myself and was positive.

Next morning, further tests by a doctor revealed my blood sugar levels were sky high.

Within hours of seeing a specialist at Wycombe General Hospital diabetic clinic I was injecting insulin to regulate my blood sugar.

Now I use a fast-acting insulin every time I eat, which works out at six jabs in the abdomen a day.

The only other medication I take is for colitis or inflammation of the large intestine. I first developed it when I picked up salmonella poisoning at a training camp in South Africa. That settled down for after a couple of weeks.

But the symptoms came back and colitis was finally diagnosed ten weeks before the Barcelona Games in 1992.

They say it's stress-related. The last attack was when I was diagnosed as diabetic, but there's been no recurrence since. Every three months I have a check-up for the diabetes and the verdict at my last complete MoT was fine.

With dyslexia, your other senses become sharper. My memory was great at school but it has become appalling these days, very selective.

People say: 'Gosh, I wish I was as healthy as you.' And it's true I am healthier than I have been for a long time.

In reality, most athletes live on a knife- edge - quite healthy, quite ill, tipping one way or the other - because they are constantly pushing their body to the limit.

I start the day with tea, no sugar, porridge and a slice of toast with Flora pro active.

Alas, because all the sweets I ate as a boy - fairground candy floss, honeycomb, Mars bars, Milky Ways - I have lots of fillings. Even as an adult I find it difficult to fill up the car with petrol without buying a bag of wine gums. I just step up the insulin accordingly.

With thanks to the highly recommended Femail.