Fanni Illés: "The para-athletes who make it to a competition have already won the biggest battle with life"

Independence is the gateway to our adult lives. Do you remember the time when you started to become independent from your parents when you felt the freedom and power of your own? 

I always saw that the strength was in the family, that I got a lot of things from them: my strength, my sense of humour, the certainty that we would somehow cope with life, that we would not see the difficulties, but would look for the solution. That's what always characterized my life. I started to feel that I was on my own path when I learned to swim and started to move towards competitive sport. At first, I thought that I was born this way, to be a Paralympic champion, and that was how life would make up for it. 

Although I didn't really know why I needed to be compensated, it was just that since society reflected that I was somehow less and couldn't live a normal life, I thought I really needed to be compensated. 

Then my career as an athlete didn't go straight to gold, my life was full of difficulties and challenges. It took a lot of humility and perseverance to even get to the Tokyo Paralympics.

Did you ever rebel as a teenager or adolescent? 

I had a normal teenage life in the sense that there was swimming, so I didn't really go anywhere. I went to maybe two house parties. The conflict came more from the fact that I had a really hard time with boarding school. I was living in Rezi, and I was going to high school in Zalaegerszeg, fifty kilometers away, so I moved to a dorm. Unfortunately, they didn't support me in doing sports there, I had a completely different daily rhythm than the others, I had a hard time following the rules there because I was still in the swimming pool in the evening, and that's why I was always the black sheep. In Zalaegerszeg, I didn't like swimming so much, but my teammates and I loved each other, and they are still my friends. It was hard to come up to Pest because I was alone here, but I'm glad I decided to do so.  

Was this an important step towards your goal? 

Yes, but it took luck and even misfortune to succeed because an injury revealed that I had been competing in the wrong category for twelve years, with others who were more able-bodied than me. But thanks to that, the hundred-meter breasts stroke then looked so smooth. I focused on the task, not on the outcome. I was at the top of the world rankings and I'd won World Championships and European Championships, but I'd also had three failed Paralympics, so by the fourth, I let go of that cramp because I felt I'd done everything. Anyone who becomes a Paralympic champion or medallist, or even makes it to the Paralympics, has already overcome some difficulty and put it in a 'box'.

Those who make it to a competition have usually already won the biggest battle of their lives. 

But you also have to see that if you're an Olympian, everyone carries you around, if you go into a shop, they recognise you, but if you're a Paralympian, they just see that there's something wrong with you, it's usually the disability is the first thing that comes to people's minds about you. 

What does water mean to you as a medium? 

Of course, I breathe with my lungs, but I feel much better in the water. In the water, there are no obstacles, no stairs, no elevator to break down. It's just the water and you and the silence. You are locked in the pool with your thoughts. And it makes a big difference what you think about when you're training.

Isn't the brain dominated only by the rational goal, the pace, the distance, and the execution of movements? 

It is impossible to never think of anything else. Sure, there are some training sessions where you have to be very focused and block everything out, but you're in the pool with your head in the pool. However, swimming always has a beneficial effect on my problems. 

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Photo: László Emmer

You are alone in the pool, but your coach is at the side of the pool. Who, in your case, is sometimes more than that. Your first coach was your father, and then Álmos Szabó, who became your fiancé. 

Yes, there was a time when my dad was standing there, I don't think that was good for our relationship. Sure, we did it, we went forward, but we took the work home. We weren't professionals, just simply a father and daughter. When he was no longer my coach, it was much easier for us to talk about swimming. At the same time, if it hadn't been for those two years, I wouldn't have been so humble and hardworking, he taught me that, even though it had nothing to do with swimming. At first Álmos was just my coach and I came up to Budapest to train with him, giving myself another chance because I wanted to quit after the London Paralympics. I had shoulder surgery and I felt the whole thing was hopeless because I was competing against people I wasn't in the same category with. That kills the sport. There was a glimmer of hope there that they would rethink this category system and then they would re-examine me, I didn't think it would come so much later. In training sessions I was in a group of people who were really para-swimmers, people like me, I enjoyed being the best in training, always pushing.

In the beginning, when Álmos became my partner, we agreed that we mustn't take work home from training and vice versa.

Of course, the latter is the harder one, not bringing your private life into the pool, especially now that we have a child, but we try and I think it works.

You used to feel that when people looked at you, they only saw what you lacked. Becoming a woman, and accepting yourself, is difficult for most young girls. In addition, your life as an athlete has been spent in a triangle of swimming pool, home, and gym, with few opportunities for privacy and perhaps less feedback from the opposite sex. 

I used to feel that as a teenager. As a kid, I always had someone to court - even if I didn't like him - I got love letters, like everyone else. I wasn't looked at by my peers as the legless one, but as Fanni the cool one, the one you could hang out with, skateboard with, whatever. When everyone around me grew up, and I had no one, I took up swimming, and I was like, "Later on, there will be someone who will not look at me and see that I have no legs, but what's inside. But of course, I was sad about it.

Do you remember the first time you felt strong, beautiful, and confident? 

I think when Álmos and I fell in love. That was a big change in my life. Even though people said I was beautiful before, you don't really believe everyone. He was the one who asked me why I wore my prosthetic legs if I didn't like them. And at that time, I started to swim very well.

It's interesting that no matter how much you are loved and supported by your family, you don't believe them when they praise you. It's important to have someone emotionally close to you, yet from outside in a sense, to hold up a mirror to you. 

Yes, Álmos was the one who really made me believe that I could achieve serious results from my work. 

Today, young people very often can't find a partner and try to divert their energies into studying or partying. The online world and the pandemic have also had an impact. 

Yes, unfortunately, it is not easy for young people to find a partner, and even if they do form a relationship, it lasts much shorter than it used to because they are not as persistent and honour is beginning to be eroded from society.

Are they afraid that they cannot trust others with their feelings? 

A lot of people are afraid to be themselves. One of my best friends, who was just as private as I was, I thought at first she was a bit of a boor, maybe a bit of a jerk and pretentious, and that was probably she thought of me at first, but we started talking, and she opened up, and I opened up. A lot of times we just forget to communicate with each other. 

Everything has sped up, and we don't take the time to get to know each other, and not to get to know each other online but in person. This is something that cannot be rushed but must be lived.

I used to think that if I could reach that result, if I achieved that many kilos, then I would be happy. It doesn't work that way. That's why I was able to become a Paralympic champion, because in the last three months I didn't think about the next day, I just thought about the present, e.g.: about how joyful the excursion was I was on at that moment. I didn't overthink, even though I was under a lot of pressure. My little boy has taught me that the present is important.

When you decided to put down the prosthetic legs you had been learning to walk on for so many years since you were little, was that also an act of self-acceptance? 

Yes. I've always felt more comfortable without my prosthetic legs. When I went home or went back to the dorm, I took them off. We have to have the courage to be ourselves, with the bad or bad memories and the good ones. It's always balanced somehow. I have a visible physical flaw, and I also have a lot of other flaws, as do others. That's me, all things considered. Even though social media pushes us to only show the good side of ourselves and only talk about what's positive in our lives, it makes a lot of people anxious.

And everything is traceable, open to misinterpretation and even manipulation. Is it too risky to expose your soul? 

It is, but you don't have to. Family is all that matters. It doesn't matter if they're rude to you on the bus or in the store or you get fined by the police because you go home and what matters is what's there. They know who you are at home, with all your traumas and everything. But for that, you have to create a home where you can really put your soul out to those who deserve it. 

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Photo: László Emmer

Were you afraid of being a mum before your son, Mór arrived? 

Yes, very much so, because it was not possible to rehearse for this in advance. Before that, I learned how I could do what I had to do in other ways: sit on the toilet on my own, bathe in the bathtub, as a child, I even learned how to climb trees or skateboard without legs. With lots and lots of practice. Some things worked the first time, some things didn't. But in case of a child, there is no practice. That's why I was afraid. Then one day I saw a mom online who had no arms. I realized I had a much easier job. However, when I announced that I was pregnant, I received a lot of negative comments on social media.

And the most hurtful wasn't even when they wrote that I was crippled and unfit, but when they targeted my baby, asking me what kind of life I was giving him, and saying that I wouldn't be able to run after him, and that was life-threatening. 

That I am making his life miserable by being like this. It's a very sensitive time anyway, pregnancy and motherhood with a baby, but I also had these stupid questions. I do read comments, even from people I don't know, because I feel they make me grow. I dare to face them and myself. It wasn't easy, but I felt strengthened by the fact that I didn't have to answer just for myself. I'm not a conflict avoider, I accept negative criticism, but then the commenter should face my response, too.

But at the same time, do they take you away from the environment that matters, from the present, from the family? 

It's much better if I learn to deal with that if I understand how people see me. And it has a much more of a positive effect on me now than it did a few years ago.

It's amazing how much you can do on your own. Many of us struggle to accept help from others. How do you feel about that? It's probably no secret that when it turned out that they were fixing the lift at today's photo shoot, Álmos carried you up to the second floor in his arms. 

For me, this is one of the most difficult. I have struggled all my life to never for a moment need help because I have a disability. Álmos has helped me a lot to think differently. He does what's a man's job, not because I don't have legs, but because he is the man.

In raising your son, do you see the benefit of having fought hard for everything? 

Mór is one and a half years old. He started doing everything very early, he was very intelligent from the start, which was nice to see, especially after so many people wrote him off during my pregnancy saying he'd be disabled and a freak. But I want to teach him that you have to fight for things. I want to teach him humility, diligence, and respect for others. I'm not as soft-hearted as his daddy, I wait until he manages something on his own and then he can be so happy! I don't want to make him feel "you are a little kid and you can't do anything". He obviously feels that I'm there and if he can't do it by the fifteenth time, I'll help him. My parents raised me the same way.

At six months pregnant, you were still training and then you went back to the pool while breastfeeding. That's tough... 

It was hard to go back to swimming, but it's what I do for a living, if I go on maternity leave for two years, my swimming career is over. I also didn't want Mór to grow up with the idea that I quit because of him. In hindsight, I feel it was too soon to go back, but I'm over it now. I'm glad he's attached to my mum, that we're not the only ones for him, I can see how kids who are always with their mum are a bit more anxious. 

He is very open to the world, bold enough to go up to everyone and smile. Of course, when it comes to giving a high five or accepting something, there's a reticence in him, thankfully. 

I often wondered in the beginning what I was doing in a swimming pool when I had a son at home. I knew what I was committing to, it's just different to know and different to feel and experience. And I've broken a lot of rules that I thought as a top athlete, for example, that we would sleep in separate rooms... 

Then you are not so tough as a mother.

As soon as he was born, I felt I couldn't do it. And I'm away from him a lot, so I didn't want to be away from him at night, too. And it was good for him. He slept through the night from the age of four months... when he wasn't teething. But otherwise, we take him everywhere with us, even to training camps with mum. We've been carrying him everywhere from the very beginning. He likes the pool, too because he likes to be where we are.

If I ask you again the question that is important to all of us, why did God create you, what is your answer? 

Well, to be Mór's mum. To tell him: it's not the difficulty you have to look at, but the opportunity. We have only one life, and I don't live it sitting at home in front of the TV and moping because I am a disabled person who, according to a part of society, is supposed to mourn for what she lost. My parents never let me think that way either.