Giles Long has established himself as a powerhouse of the Great Britain Paralympic Swimming Team. He is one of the most successful and well-respected Paralympic swimmers of our time.

Giles' life and career delights audiences from many countries with humour and tales of how sheer grit and teamwork can achieve the highest levels of performance. With excellent feedback every time many organisations re-book Giles for further events.

Giles' journey to elite success is very different from the typical athlete. At the age of thirteen Giles was diagnosed with cancer. The bone tumour in his arm meant that his dreams of going to the Olympics, held as a seven year old boy, were shattered.

Despite the apparent end of his potential competitive able-bodied swimming career, Giles carried on swimming, finding the process of goal setting and building a team around him, in a time of rapid change, not only focussing but exhilarating. But coming to terms with his newly acquired disability was something Giles initially struggled with.

The culmination of this anxiety was at a GB Paralympic training weekend when he entered a huge room full of other people with a disability. This made him realise what having cancer really meant, and he faced a decision as to whether to continue as a disabled swimmer.

A chance meeting with an eminent swimming coach changed all that. In what is a very poignant part of Giles speech, Giles manages to have the audience sitting on the edge of their seat. He'll have you crying one minute and laughing out loud the next.

Giles broke his first World Record at the age of 17 and in 1996 qualified for the 100m Butterfly at the Atlanta Paralympics as the fastest man in the world. But an unexpected beating in the heats by a newcomer forced Giles to re-evaluate where his targets and goals truly lay. He left Atlanta with the gold, though only just. It was a wake-up call.