Tara Flood
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Tara Flood (born 1966) is a retired British
Paralympic swimmer Para swimming is an adaptation of the sport of swimming for athletes with disabilities. Para swimmers compete at the Summer Paralympic Games and at other sports competitions throughout the world. The sport is governed by the International Para ...
who competed in three
Paralympic Games The Paralympic Games or Paralympics, also known as the ''Games of the Paralympiad'', is a periodic series of international multisport events involving athletes with a range of physical disabilities, including impaired muscle power and impaire ...
and winning seven medals. She was born without her forearms. She is now a disability rights activist.


Personal life

Flood was born in
Preston, Lancashire Preston () is a city on the north bank of the River Ribble in Lancashire, England. The city is the administrative centre of the county of Lancashire and the wider City of Preston local government district. Preston and its surrounding distri ...
and was discriminated by her grandmother who often insulted her mother by saying "look what Sally's given birth to" which emotionally affected both Tara and her mother. Her mother had a nervous breakdown when Tara was two days old and was heavily sedated. She attended a residential special school at sixteen months to her sixteenth birthday in
East Sussex East Sussex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England on the English Channel coast. It is bordered by Kent to the north and east, West Sussex to the west, and Surrey to the north-west. The largest settlement in East Su ...
.


Swimming career

Flood's first experiences of being in the pool was when she was two or three years old, she was thrown into the pool and described "those of us that literally bobbed to the surface were just sort of like, oh great, let's really sort of get on, and those that didn't were just sort of pulled out". Flood began swimming aged five at her residential school where she took swimming lessons with other children who had similar disabilities to her. She began swimming competitively aged twelve then attended the
1984 Summer Paralympics The 1984 International Games for the Disabled, canonically the 1984 Summer Paralympics were the seventh Paralympic Games to be held. There were two separate competitions: one in Stoke Mandeville, England, United Kingdom for wheelchair athletes ...
in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
aged thirteen.


Disability rights activism

Flood works in
London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
at as a disability activist and worked in various disability rights charities in the city. She was also involved with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and is campaigning to get the Convention fully implemented.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Flood, Tara 1966 births Living people Sportspeople from Preston, Lancashire Swimmers from London Paralympic swimmers for Great Britain Swimmers at the 1984 Summer Paralympics Swimmers at the 1988 Summer Paralympics Swimmers at the 1992 Summer Paralympics Medalists at the 1984 Summer Paralympics Medalists at the 1988 Summer Paralympics Medalists at the 1992 Summer Paralympics Paralympic medalists in swimming Paralympic gold medalists for Great Britain Paralympic silver medalists for Great Britain Paralympic bronze medalists for Great Britain British female freestyle swimmers S2-classified para swimmers 20th-century British sportswomen