UK Edition
David Weir reveals his battle with depression: 'I wrote a letter to my kids saying I was going away and I was sorry'
David Weir has revealed the extent of the crippling depression which led to him separating from the mother of his three young children and being stopped on a motorway in Cumbria by police after his family feared for his safety.
Weir is one of Great Britain’s most successful Paralympic athletes, having won six gold medals – including four at his home Games in London – and seven London Marathon titles, the most recent of which came in April.
Yet in a brutally honest interview with Telegraph Sport, Weir has admitted that there were days leading up to the event when he genuinely did not know if he would “make it to the start line”, such was the extent of the mental anguish which has gripped him since his stunning success at London 2012.
Failure to win a single medal at the Rio Paralympics last summer after competing in four events pushed him still further into a deep depression, and Weir has disclosed that he sought counselling at the start of the year.
“I remember waking up after New Year and realising I couldn’t live in my house any more,” he said. “On New Year’s Eve we all went out to the local social club. Even then I wasn’t happy. I just didn’t feel I was there. I felt like I was someone looking down from above and trying to be a happy person, but I wasn’t.”
After eight years with his partner, Emily, and three young children, Mason, Tillia, and Lenny, who was born while Weir was in Rio, he moved out of the family home and into his mother’s house nearby. But it was just the beginning of his troubles. He remained deeply depressed and, a few weeks later, confused and irrational, he decided to drive to visit his father, who lives in Northern Ireland.
“I wrote a letter to the kids saying I was going away, and that I was sorry,” explained Weir, who also has a teenage daughter, Ronie, from a previous relationship. “I’d picked up some clothes and said to my mum I was going training. But I didn’t go to training, I just drove to Scotland. I was going to get the ferry, and see my old man. I’d also turned my phone off.”
Knowing Weir was in a dark place, his family raised the alarm. “I’d been driving for five hours and I got stopped on the M6 by police at 11 o’clock at night,” Weir said. “Obviously someone reported me and said I was mentally unstable. When the police stopped me they said: ‘You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?’ I said: ‘No, I’m going to see my dad. I’m not that kind of person’.
“They said that they had been trying to find me for hours and could I ring some people. I turned my phone back on and obviously I had messages.”
He realised it was Ronie’s birthday the next day, so turned around and drove all the way back in one night. By the time, he arrived home, he had been driving 14 hours.
“I was confused,” he said. “I got the dates wrong in my head. Then I thought, how can I be so selfish?”
The reality, of course, was that Weir was unwell. “I really wasn’t myself. I couldn’t talk properly. I was stuttering. My speech was slow. I was twitchy. I was in training for the London Marathon, but there were times when I would forget to eat for a few days.”
It was then that his long-term coach, Jenny Archer, suggested he seek professional help. “It proved a real help and a turning point. We went back through my life and realised I had issues stemming from childhood over the fact that I was angry about being disabled.”
Weir, who was born with a spinal cord transection that left him unable to use his legs, also feels he was put under pressure by British Athletics. The four gold medals in London – in the 800m, 1500m, 5000m and marathon in the T54 class – brought several million pounds of funding from UK Sport to para-athletics, yet Weir’s priorities, he believes, were marginalised.
“British Athletics put gold medals round my neck before I’d even got on the track in London,” he said. “People don’t realise how much pressure was on my shoulders. There was a lot of things on me to deliver. If it wasn’t on the racing side, it was at home. I had to provide for the kids and if I didn’t win this race I wasn’t getting any money.
“Then, after London, it was always, can I deliver? Deliver, deliver, deliver. Maybe I couldn’t deal with the pressure afterwards. I don’t know if 2012 destroyed me or made me a better person.”
Weir also believes he was not treated in the same way as other headline stars of London 2012.
“It was always a battle,” he said. “If it was Mo Farah they [British Athletics] would have said: ‘You’re doing everything right, whatever you need, pick up the phone, don’t worry about it’. That’s all I ever wanted. But it was always a battle.
“I didn’t understand why it was like that. That was another pressure on me. It was always a stress. Basic things like, can I stay in St Mary’s University [his training base] and use the physio. I had a good set-up there. The team knew me, they knew my body.”
Things changed in Weir’s mind. “After 2012 I stuck my fingers up at everyone,” he admitted. “I was fed up of the battle, and that they just expected me to always win. I kept saying before Rio that times had changed, that the rest of the world are getting quicker, and no one is going to be dominant like that on the track again. It was a one-off.”
Yet after the disappointment of Rio, Weir could barely live with himself, and was racked with guilt that he had missed the birth of his son. “I didn’t feel like a man. I felt like I should have been there to support someone who was having my child. Being out there I was thinking: ‘I don’t want to be here, I’d rather be at home, trying to help out’. When I got back it was all right, but my performance on the track was disappointing. I just don’t know what went on physically, or mentally. I was changing my set-up every day and that’s not like me.”
Things continued to spiral.
Weir quit the British team after a leading British Athletics wheelchair coach, Jenni Banks, called him a “disgrace” and accused him of intentionally sabotaging a relay race in Rio.
“Her saying that I threw the race and didn’t perform for the team and that I was a disgrace to the country and should never wear a GB vest again – that really hurt me, given what I’ve done over the years. I’ve won 28 medals for the country. So because I’d had one bad Games I should be thrown out? To have someone say all that s--- after all the years of effort I’d put in racing ... it killed me.”
Even so, Weir said that he felt “great shame” when he returned home, and found it hard to show his face in public. “I got asked to go to the parade and I was like, ‘What for? I didn’t f------ medal. How could I show my face?’ Every championships I’ve been to I’ve medalled. I felt ashamed, like I’d let down everyone. I just bottled things up and that’s the problem.
“We had a rule indoors that we didn’t talk about racing. Maybe I should have. Emily had her own problems as well looking after the kids. I could see certain things we were doing but I was just thinking: ‘I don’t want to be here’. That was my deep depression, I think. I couldn’t cope with anything – the kids, her, racing.”
At least now things are beginning to change for the better. Counselling has played its part, but so, too, has the love of his children, and the support of friends such as boxer Ricky Boylan, with whom Weir lived for a month. On Tuesday, he confirmed that he would take part in next month’s Müller Anniversary Games, back at the London Stadium which turned him into a household name.
“I think I’ve had so much worry over the last six months that the future isn’t a concern for me now,” he said. “There’s other avenues that I’m starting to go into. My racing career isn’t over. I enjoy training now, which I never did before.
“But the future is all about my kids, to be honest. Doing more stuff for them. Mason wants to play football. If that means travelling up and down the country, if he finds a team, then that’s my future.
“I will find work. Even if it means I have to get a nine-to-five job, it doesn’t bother me. So long as I get some money I can pay what I want to pay for and look after my children, then I’m happy.
“I’m not one of these material guys who needs a massive mansion or a nice big fast car or a big bank balance. I’d be happy to live in a two-bedroom flat so long as I’ve got room for my kids to come round when I see them. So long as I’ve got a roof over my head and a bit of my own space, I’m happy.”