For over fifteen years Stephen performed with considerable success at the highest level in international disability athletics and from 1994 until he retired, Stephen was consistently Scotland’s most successful athlete. Stephen has cerebral palsy with a weakness on one side of his body which impacted on his sprinting technique.
Stephen burst on to the scene as a T38 sprinter at the IPC Athletics World Championships in Berlin in 1994 and won three gold medals and set a world record. He was then a first pick for Team GB and rarely if ever disappointed. The T38 class experienced massive improvements in performance during his career and Stephen was up there with the best in the world.
Selection for the Paralympic Games in Atlanta followed in 1996 and he repeated the achievement of Berlin and added a bronze in the 4 x 100metres relay. This was the period when Stephen was at his very best and at the World Championships in Birmingham in 1998 he had his finest hour with world record runs in 100m, 200m, and 400 metres and another in 4 x 400metres relay. Undefeated in the sprints in the T38 class and the world record holder in all three is how the young Livingston man headed towards Sydney in 2000.
From 2000 onwards Stephen consistently received the call to represent GB at European, World and Paralympic level. In Sydney he won two silver and two bronze medals and at the IPC world championships in 2002 in Lille he won two silver medals. In Athens in 2004 he was once again in the medals and maintained his record of having won medals in all three of his Paralympic Games with a bronze in the 400m. This success was only 9 months after breaking his right ankle. Further successes were recorded at CPISRA World Games and the double gold medal wins at the IPC European Championships in Assen in the Netherlands in 2003 are up there with his finest performances. Stephen also returned to Assen in 2006 for his final IPC world championships where he won bronze in the 400m. Stephen’s signed off from high performance disability athletics at the Paralympic Games were in Beijing and few athletes can claim to have competed at the highest level in such a competitive class for so many years.
Stephen is a graduate of Napier University, the University of the Pacific California USA and post graduate from Teesside University. Throughout his athletics career he received coaching support from John de Courcy and Eric Simpson in particular. As a Lottery Funded athlete he benefited from support services provided through the Scottish Institute of Sport. Over the years he has been a prolific winner of Sports Awards such as the British Sports Writers Award 1996, Scottish Athlete of the Year SAF 1996, Sunday Mail Great Scot Unsung Hero 1996 and the SDS Athlete of the Year 2006 and 2005. Stephen had a very successful career and is undoubtedly one of Scotland’s greatest ever international disabled athletes.