Tanni Grey Thompson OBE

What Michael has already achieved is absolutely incredible and the extent to which he is pushing himself to achieve his ambitions defies anything that I could possibly comprehend as an athlete.

I used to think that I went through a pain barrier when I was training and competing but this is nothing like the challenges that Michael has experienced and will go through in the future, making me think that I simply just don't train hard enough!

When I first met him, the understated and simple way that he just said " Tanni, I'm going to the South Pole " made me stop and think whether I had even heard him correctly, which I obviously had.

Michael is proving that there truly is no barrier to what you can achieve - you just have to have the imagination and belief that you can do it. He is also pushing back the boundaries for disabled people in ways that even 10 years ago we would not have dreamed possible.