We have all seen those Q and A interviews where a celebrity is asked who he or she would invite to a dinner party. It is a game we can all play. Most of my guests would be blindingly obvious – Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela, Angelina Jolie...and I would also be more than happy to break bread with one of Britain's greatest living sportsmen, though I doubt any of the other guests would have heard of him. Indeed, not that many people have outside the word wheelchair racing.

It has been said that David Weir is the sort of bloke you could chat to down at your local all night and never know he is currently the sport's principal achiever,·a world and Paralympic champion whose cabinet is crammed with trophies and medals.

In any other sphere of sport he'd be an icon. But he says he's happy to be who he is: "That's me - Dave from Wallington, I might have won a few things but I've still got the same mates I've had from back on the council estate."

I met Weir for the first time recently after his regular training spin in Richmond Park, where he was preparing for this Sunday's Virgin London Marathon, a race he has won four times - which might have been five had his wheelchair not got a double puncture last year.

We quickly found some common ground. Turns out he's a great boxing fan. Indeed, in different circumstances, he'd love to have been a boxer, like two of his brothers, one an ABA finalist and another a pro for a while. "My good friend friend Ricky Bullen has just turned pro. I love the fight game. My heroes are·Roberto Duran,·Joe Calzaghe and Ricky Hatton."

Boxer he could never be, having been born almost·32 years ago with spinal cord transection, which left him without the use of his legs. But fighter he unquestionably is.

Tattooed on his chest is a Japanese symbol meaning "To win."

"That pretty well sums me up as an athlete," he says.

Apart from the redoubtable Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, Britain has never had such a prolific wheelchair wizard, a sport he took up after trying swimming and basketball.

Subsequently he has won double Paralympic gold, a silver and bronze in Beijing and a silver and bronze in Athens, collecting an MBE along the way

Last year he won the New York Marathon and his latest triumph was triple gold - in the T54 800 metres, 1500m, and 5,000m - in the World Championships in Christchurch.


Usually, as did the London Marathon's other renowned David – "Bootsie" Bedford whose valedictory event as race director this is – Weir he likes to lead from the front. But in Christchurch he had to change tactics because of a lack of preparation following a shoulder operation.

Weir has the shoulders of a weightlifter from the amount of weight training he does, and they are a vital part of the human machinery which allied to his wheels·- newly custom-built at £5,000- have made him the Lewis Hamilton of his sport.

"Actually our chairs are like Formula One cars - they're the absolute cutting edge of technology - and everything has to be just perfect.

"If it wasn't for wheelchair racing [he has been a full-time athlete for ten years] I don't know what I would have done," he tells me. "I'd probably have been a bum."

The Paralympic scene is a somewhat different now to when he first started spinning the wheels. "There are more kids on the streets in wheelchairs and the public are used to seeing them. Also I think people have become fascinated by the Paralympics from what they have seen on TV. They realise they can be as exciting as able bodied sport.

"We are not quite there yet in terms of being recognised like the able bodied athletes but I am hopeful that it will come.

It certainly doesn't bother him that he's not as famous as, say Jessica Ennis or Chris Hoy.

"I do get recognised now and then which is nice but I just see myself as a wheelchair athlete doing his best for his country.

"When I first started doing the marathon people used to pat me on then back and say 'Well done.' They thought I'd just got up that morning, got into the wheelchair and raced. They had no idea of the sort of hard work and preparation that goes into it."

Yet it hasn't all been freewheeling for the South Londoner. He admits falling out of love with the sport some years back, when his life could have turned sour. "It was after Atlanta. I was about 17 and missed doing the things that other teenagers were doing, like going down to the pub for a drink with your mates.·I was fed up with the training, with the discipline of it all, stuck in the same routine. Also there was a lot of politics in the sport at the time and I thought 'I don't need this any more, I need to live a little.

"Then when I watched the Sydney Paralympics on TV, with Tanni winning all those medals. I just sat there crying. It broke my heart. I had to turn it off. I said to myself 'I've got to do this.' I had no qualifications, nothing. Wheelchair racing was the only thing I was any good at."

His wheels of fortune changed when he was reunited with his present coach Jenny Archer, who had been a fitness trainer with Vinnie Jones and the Crazy Gang at Wimbledon FC, and knew how to knock hard men into line. "She had been training another group of wheelchair athletes for about six months. I needed to be pushed a little bit so I asked her to help me. Until then I didn't know what hard training was.


"I won the London Marathon that year. She has been coaching me ever since and now I help out with the coaching of other youngsters.

"I've got this strong competitive edge. I think it's in my genes. My dad was a champion miler in the Army and two of my brothers were both tidy boxers.

"My parents brought me up to be independent. I was David Weir, not poor David in a wheelchair. My mates don't see the wheelchair, they just see me. I have never seen myself as disabled. I have always been treated as normal."

That normality extends to his personal family life. He has an eight-year-old daughter from a previous relationship – and is expecting a baby with his new partner this summer.

He also produces dance music. "'I'm a massive house fan," he says. "I know a few of the Ministry of Sound lads. I'd love to have a wine bar and get them DJing."

Apart from the London Marathon he has a number of track races this year, two of them in Switzerland. "The track races are very important because they set the qualifying standards.·I love going to Switzerland because the tracks are so fast and the competition is good.·One of my targets this year is to get my world records back.·I have to have a challenge every year at this stage in my career because there isn't much I haven't won.

"I've won London and New York marathons, broken two world records and been world champion three times as well as getting gold medals in Beijing, so I need another challenge, but they are very hard to find."

His wheelchair racing hero, the Swiss legend Heinz Frei, now 52 will be one of his rivals on Sunday. "He may be getting on a bit, but he's not there to make up the numbers, I don't underestimate him. He'll be trying to win. He's the best wheelchair racer there's ever been."

Of course, Weir's eyes are focussed beyond this weekend

"I'll definitely do the marathon in 2012 because my training is specifically geared towards that.

"I think about it all the time. London is always at the back of my mind. To win the marathon down the Mall would be the pinnacle of my career. What better way to bow out?

"Hopefully I'll stay fit and give it a go. To win gold in London would be a real dream come true."

So who would he invite for that celebratory celeb nosh should he win?"

Definitely Heinz Frei and Roberto Duran, and he'd love the late Sir Ludwig Guttman to have been there as the founder of the Paralympics. "I'd also like to meet Margaret Thatcher, because of her strength as a leader. I'd ask her what she makes of the country today."

Now that would be a fascinating dinner conversation.

Lucozade Sport is fuelling David Weir at this year's Virgin London Marathon. For more info, tips and videos click here.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.