World Para Athletics Championships: Dan Pembroke on returning to sport

Dan Pembroke started taking part in javelin events as a youngster

British Paralympic javelin thrower Dan Pembroke's book of life experiences has got plenty of chapters already - but he hopes it isn't finished yet.

An Olympic hopeful whose 2012 dreams were ended by injury, Pembroke stepped away from the sport completely because of a degenerative eye condition and travelled the world. He then returned and became a Para-athlete, winning gold at the rescheduled Tokyo Paralympic Games.

Now he aims to claim the F13 javelin world title at the Para Athletics World Championships in Paris on Saturday - a day before his 32nd birthday.

"I have lived another life away from sport so coming back into the competition arena has been quite a strange experience for me," Pembroke told BBC Sport.

"It's not fantastic that my eyesight is deteriorating, but it isn't often that you can create a positive out of a negative situation."

While a snapped medial collateral ligament in his elbow ruled him out of London 2012, Pembroke was already dealing with the genetic eye condition retinitis pigmentosa, which leads to gradual loss of vision.

With his sight deteriorating, he was faced with the tough decision of whether to stay with athletics and go through lengthy rehab for his injured elbow or make the most of his usable vision and embark on his other passion - travelling, which won the day.

"It is good to be impulsive sometimes and go with your gut feeling," he said.

"I had to act fast because of my condition - but if I didn't have that decision, maybe I would have never gone travelling, or met my fiancee Martina or come into Para-sport."

Life on the road included time kayaking and fishing in Sardinia, where he and Martina bonded over a shared love of travel. The pair then embarked on further adventures in South East Asia before taking up holiday visas, processing mussels in New Zealand, working on berry orchards in Australia and eventually ending up as harvest supervisors in Tasmania.

But the reality of his deteriorating eyesight hit and after a couple of near misses involving forklift trucks, Pembroke made the decision to return to the UK in May 2019 to embark on a sports massage therapy course at the Royal National College for the Blind in Hereford.

Later that summer, he was also offered a place on a gene therapy trial at Moorfields Eye Hospital, which has stabilised the sight loss in his right eye, and he started to investigate a return to sport.

Pembroke won javelin gold for Great Britain at the delayed 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo

"I tried running but it wasn't for me and I started throwing the javelin again and was put in contact with the then GB Paralympic head coach Paula Dunn," Pembroke said.

"She wanted to see what I could do, so I took part in a competition, threw once and that was enough for her to get me on board.

"I got my national and then international classification and everything has gone on from there.

"Coming back to javelin, I had a lot of muscle memory and I knew about technique but things had changed because my eyesight had deteriorated since 2011.

"Now it has an impact on my balance of perception and where the ground is. While I can see very well in front of me when I run down the runway, my peripheral vision isn't good - so in a couple of competitions, I have run down the runway and out of the lines without realising, which is quite disorientating.

"Also, while I left the sport in my early 20s and came back in my late 20s, my brain still thinks I should train like I am in my early 20s, so it has been a steep learning curve.

"Having been given the opportunity by British Athletics and UK Sport to be a professional athlete, I ran into a lot of problems because I was overtraining and pushed my body to limits that it wasn't ready to be at yet. I had no clue what my body was like and I am still learning.

"It is about finding the best way to train so I can get the best out of myself. I am now coached by Dave Turner and it has taken time for us to get to know each other because at the start we didn't know each other's boundaries and limits."

Pembroke won gold at the European Para Athletics Championships in June 2021 and went on to repeat the feat on the big stage in Tokyo a couple of months later but that event was a challenge.

"To get to Tokyo and throw a Paralympic record of 69.52m was a miracle because I was in terrible physical shape," he said.

"I had a lot of niggly injuries because my body wasn't used to what I was putting it through and we were putting sticking plasters on everything.

"The Tokyo stadium was enormous and I was competing at night with the floodlights on, so although the heavy rain on the night made for horrendous conditions for a thrower, I felt like I was at the best competition in the world."

Now, as well as wedding plans and training, Pembroke, who is also a keen gardener and grows his own vegetables on his allotment, is hoping for world gold, and to beat the F13 world record of 71.01m.

"This year has been my best season since I came into Para-athletics," he said.

"I feel in good shape and my progression through competitions have been on target and I feel we have done all we can. All I can do is arrive on the day and give it my best."