My parents protected me from the storm over Oscar Pistorius: When the Paralympics icon was jailed, attention turned to the child who raced him four years earlier... now ELLIE CHALLIS is writing her own story in Paris

This is not the first time Ellie Challis has appeared on these pages.

When she was just five years old, the quadruple amputee was featured in the Daily Mail wearing running blades and racing Oscar Pistorius, then the most famous face in Paralympic sport before his life took a very dark turn.

‘My dad said he’d give me £10 if I won the race!’ recalls Challis, who Pistorius playfully let win over 15 metres. ‘Running was always what I wanted to do, so I thought it was quite cool. I was the youngest child to have blades because they didn’t make them for children. Now it is normal, so it was nice to be a part of that.’

That day in 2009 also left a lasting impression on Pistorius, who used a Mail photograph of him with the young child from Clacton-on-Sea as his profile picture on Twitter, now X. But when the South African runner shot dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp four years later, Challis was caught up in the media storm. The world’s press wanted to know all about the little girl in the picture and how she felt about her one-time hero being a murderer.

‘Yes, it was bad,’ says Challis, now 20. ‘Everyone wanted to know my opinion. I was too young at the time, so my parents had to deal with it. They tried to just ignore everyone to protect me.’

The photographer who captured Pistorius and Challis together in London was Mail Sport’s Andy Hooper. Fifteen years on, he is again the man with the camera for another photoshoot with Challis — but this time she is the Paralympic star in focus.

The British swimmer’s story is remarkable, regardless of her connection with Pistorius. When she was 16 months old, she contracted meningitis and was given a five per cent chance of surviving. She even ‘died’ for two minutes after her heart stopped. ‘I always tell everyone that — it’s my little fun fact,’ says Challis with a smile. ‘But it sounds a bit scary. I was in a coma for three weeks and I needed surgery. I was very lucky.’

While Challis survived meningitis, she had her legs amputated above the knee and her arms removed below the elbow to save her life after septicaemia set in. She spent a further 17 days in hospital before returning home, with dad Paul giving up work to become her full-time carer.

When she was three, she got her first set of prosthetic legs, funded by friends and neighbours. Challis would run and play football at primary school. But she was inspired to start taking swimming seriously by the film Dolphin Tale, a story of a dolphin called Winter, who lost her tail at sea but learnt to swim again after being fitted with a prosthetic one.

‘I was learning to swim at the time, so that was one of the things that made everything seem possible,’ says Challis. ‘We watched it and thought it was a fictional story, then it said at the end it was true. We just knew we had to go to America to meet Winter. I have gone a few times and we still have a great connection with the aquarium in Florida.’

Further inspiration came from London 2012, when she went to watch the athletics at the Olympics and Paralympics. ‘To see the whole stadium filled for para sport was insane,’ says Challis. Equally impactful was watching on TV as Ellie Simmonds won four medals in the pool in London. ‘It was the first time I’d seen her swim on TV,’ she says. ‘Ellie has been a big inspiration for pretty much every para swimmer around the world.

‘Without her in 2012, I don’t think para swimming would be as big as it is now. I met her for the first time in 2018 and got a picture with her. I talk to her quite a lot still and she is very supportive of me.’

Aged just 13, Challis broke a British record that had stood for 13 years, then set a new world record in the same SB2 50 metres breaststroke event two years later. She made her Olympic debut in Tokyo in 2021 aged 17 as the youngest member of ParalympicsGB’s 227-strong squad, winning silver in the S3 50m backstroke and finishing fourth in the 100m freestyle.

‘Tokyo was a dream come true — not just winning the medal, but the whole experience,’ says Challis, who was nominated for the BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year award alongside football superstar Jude Bellingham and skateboarder Sky Brown.

Outside of swimming, Challis is a qualified baker, studying patisserie and confectionery skills at college in Manchester, where she moved to train full-time in the build-up to Tokyo, helped by National Lottery funding.

She is also a skilled snowboarder and could one day switch from the summer to winter Paralympics. ‘At the age of 14, I was the first British quadruple amputee to snowboard, which is crazy,’ explains Challis. ‘It’s the opposite to swimming, which is why I love it. I’m really glad I have the support from Aquatics GB to do it. It’s another form of physio for me, because from sitting in my chair, I struggle with my hips being really tight. At the moment it’s just a hobby, but it’s one of my favourite things to do and I improve every week. Who knows what I will do after swimming? Nobody has ever gone on to do snowboarding. We will see.’

For now, though, Challis has plenty to achieve in the pool. She is already the holder of 10 world championship medals, including three golds, but wants to win her first Paralympic title in Paris. ‘I have improved massively and there is more to come,’ insists Challis. ‘I learnt a lot from Tokyo. I experienced so many new things, so I was happy with how I raced there. But going into Paris I know a lot more of what to expect. I am hoping to come away with two medals.’

Challis is the only British swimmer in Paris who will compete in a classification lower than S5, with S1 being the most severe disability. For her, inspiring young amputees to start swimming is more important than her own results. ‘I am the only one in the UK in a lower class,’ she says. ‘It would be nice if I can get people to realise what swimming can do for you and your body, how much it can help you, and fill those lower classes more. These people are out there, they just don’t know it.’

Ellie receives funding from the National Lottery, who raise more than £30m a week for good causes including funding sport. www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk