Rio de Janeiro, a city famous for football, beaches, and Christ the Redeemer. A city where dreams of success live in the favelas that cling to the steep hillside overlooking the golden beaches below. For David Smith, it is the humble Carioca Arena that he treasures most. It was there during a humid August day in 2016 that he finally realised his lifetime ambition. Individual Paralympic glory. But as he prepares to defend his BC1 Boccia Gold medal in Paris this summer, his story of success could just as easily have never been written.
“Sport was never really an option for me when I was young” explains Smith, a wry smile on his face as he thinks back to his earliest sporting memories. “Whenever I played football with my mates I was always goalkeeper or referee.”
The Eastleigh native’s first introduction to boccia came at the age of six, yet it wasn’t exactly love at first sight.
“I didn’t really know what I was doing” Smith says as he adjusts himself in his powerchair “I didn’t have guidance of how to play properly, it took me a few years to figure out the sport as I just assumed it was chucking something as far as possible.
“My parents quickly realised I needed to go to a different school in order to realise my potential not just within sport but academia too.”
David became a full-time boarding student at Treloars School in Alton, Hampshire, a school and college that specialises in teaching young people with physical disabilities, and it was there where a love Boccia started to form, although initially not for the reasons you might expect.
“I enjoyed doing lots of things (at Treloars) and Boccia was quite far down my list, but on a Monday night Boccia was an available activity that I could do instead of homework and so because it got me out of homework I signed up” Smith says, laughing at the memory.
It quickly become more than just an activity to escape homework though, and at the age of just 14 he became the youngest-ever player to win the British Boccia Championships.
“Playing Boccia regularly with people that understood the game and being coached properly helped me get better. I went up to Scotland not expecting anything and I ended up winning the whole thing.”
From there Smith’s career took off, becoming a prominent member of Team GB within 18 months of that initial British title.
After missing out on selection to the 2004 Paralympic games in Athens, Smith went into the 2008 games in Beijing extremely confident as a double World Champion having secured both team and individual gold at the 2007 World Championships in Rio. However, in his first Paralympic Games, he could only manage a disappointing 13th placed finish individually.
“It was a bit of a whirlwind, I was young, naive, and I was not expecting much. My expectations were that it was just another competition with just a few more bells and whistles on, but I quickly realised it wasn’t that.” It wasn’t all disappointment in Beijing for Smith, who won his first Paralympic Gold Medal in the team event.
After Beijing, Smith went on to win his first European Championships in 2009 and became world number one, but then lost in the quarter-finals of the World Championships in the following year, before grabbing bronze in the 2011 World Championships. 2012 saw Smith compete in a home Paralympic games in London, something he says brought a lot of extra pressure:
“Yeah that was tough. I didn’t want to be this guy that had all the talent but nothing to show for it. I certainly wanted to medal in the individuals just to get that monkey off my back a little bit after the disappointment in Beijing, so it was tough.” While they were unable to defend their team gold from four years prior, losing in the final, Smith was able to win his first Paralympic medal, a silver after also losing in the final.”
The London games started Smith’s ‘decade of dominance’, winning four individual European titles, back to back World Championships in 2014 and 2018, the latter in front of a home crowd in Liverpool, and finally winning Paralympic Gold in Rio at the 2016 Games, a title he would go on to successfully defend at the delayed Tokyo Games 3 years ago.
During the closing ceremony in Tokyo, Smith was chosen to be Great Britain’s flag bearer, something he says that was great for the sport and also a huge honour for him.
“It was a massive moment for the sport and a massive honour for me. In a country that is so dominant in other Paralympic sports, Boccia sometimes gets overlooked so it’s nice. It’s a moment I’ll never forget.”
In recognition for his services to the sport of boccia Smith was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2017, and a Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2022.
Looking ahead to this summer’s games in Paris, Smith will be looking to make it a hat trick of individual gold medals and has high hopes, but having slipped to number three in the world rankings he admits that the title is up for grabs.
“There’s three or four of us who could probably win it, people have caught up from my period of dominance which was going to happen at some point. In an ideal world I’d love to win it again, but realistically I’d settle for a medal of any colour.”
The 2024 Paris Paralympics get underway on the 28th of August, where the next chapter in Smith and every other Paralympians inspiring story shall be written.
Gregg Covers Sport 
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