“There are thousands of people out there that have a disability. Just because you have one doesn’t mean you have to stop living,” says Lucy Shuker as she calmly reflects on her journey of more than two decades and the message she hopes it conveys. It is fair to say Shuker has embodied those sentiments in full. At 44 years old, she has been an unceasing presence at the highest level of wheelchair tennis, making her one of the most successful British players.
This journey began with life-changing adversity. Aged 21, shortly after graduating from university and passing her driving test, Shuker was involved in a motorcycle crash that left her paralysed from the chest down. She spent 10 months in hospital as she tried to come to terms with the reality that three-quarters of her body no longer worked.
During her continued recovery, Shuker’s first encounter with wheelchair tennis was fated. She happened to buy her first chair from the company run by the British quad wheelchair tennis legend Peter Norfolk. During their conversation, Shuker’s affinity for badminton before her accident prompted Norfolk to suggest taking up wheelchair tennis.
While she readjusted to life after her accident, Shuker found solace on the court with able-bodied family and friends. “I took up the sport just to find me again, to find enjoyment in playing a sport,” she says. “It wasn’t to become a Paralympian.”
She has taken it further than she could have ever imagined. A former No 5 in singles and No 3 in doubles, Shuker’s honours include a silver medal in women’s doubles at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. With her former partner, Jordanne, Whiley, they became the first British women to win a wheelchair tennis medal with bronze at London 2012. She has reached eight grand slam finals in women’s doubles, including five at Wimbledon. Shuker has won 129 titles in singles and doubles and was Great Britain’s flag bearer at the Paralympics in 2021.
Those achievements are even more remarkable considering the significance of her accident. During the early stages of her recovery, Shuker was told her disability was too severe for her to have any hope of competing at the highest level of wheelchair tennis, which is open to a range of disabilities. “I find I compare myself to those that have a lesser disability,” she says. “With that comes the struggles and the questioning of: ‘Do I belong?’ But I’ve got years of experience. I love the sport, I’ve still got the drive to achieve more and I remember why I picked up the racket in the first place.”
The integration of wheelchair tennis into some of the biggest tournaments has quietly been one of the most significant recent developments in the professional game. Witnessing players such as Diede de Groot, the incomparable 42-time grand slam champion from the Netherlands, and Britain’s Alfie Hewett tussling win the final days of major tournaments is now a core part of the grand slam experience and every year more fans become familiar with the stories of those players. This year, the Australian Open, Wimbledon and US Open have expanded from eight- to 16-player draws, underlining the development of the sport.
It is easy, however, to forget how gradual this process has been. Singles has been contested at all the grand slam tournaments since 2016 when Wimbledon finally joined the other three . Wheelchair tennis has developed dramatically since Shuker first took up the sport. She believes it is important for more integration at Association ofTennisProfessionals and Women’s Tennis Association events “It helps drive [wheelchair tennis],” she says. “It helps raise the awareness, hopefully it raises the athletes’s profiles, increases sponsorship opportunities.”
With her platform growing, Shuker also has more opportunities to advocate for causes close to her heart. She is an LTA youth ambassador, a role she has used to promote tennis in schools, a notable endeavour at a time when Britain has 7,000 fewer PE teachers than before the 2012 Olympic Games. The LTA’s programme has trained more than 26,000 teachers to provide tennis in schools through a combination of free online and in-person training courses.
“If you can get young people to start playing tennis, there’s so many benefits from it, whether it’s social, physical, mental. If people get the bug from a young age, then they’re more likely to continue it into the latter part of life,” says Shuker. “There’s so many benefits – teamwork, problem-solving, hand-eye coordination. Whereas technology is advancing, more and more people are becoming less active and I suppose that’s just natural – it’s iPads, gaming – but physical activity is so important.”
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Shuker’s lifestyle as a tennis player has in some ways signified her freedom. She has spent the past two decades travelling the world while pursuing her goals with discipline. She plays one of the most individualistic sports and on the court, she, with her partner, is the author her own destiny. Her travels, however, have also brought her face to face with one of the biggest obstacles to freedom for many wheelchair users in their day-to-day lives: accessibility. The more governments around the world try to accommodate wheelchair users in their towns and cities, the more independent they can be.
“That’s the dream,” she says. “You want it to be almost like you don’t have to think about it. You just want access to be the norm. I appreciate the world wasn’t created for wheelchair users, for those that have disabilities, but being able to accommodate it, being able to think, just taking a moment in terms of access, putting in a ramp as opposed to steps, it transforms people’s lives. It means that people are included as opposed to excluded. That impacts the person, but also their friends and their families. It just means that everyone’s involved, no one feels different and excluded. I wish that was the case for everyone in the world.”
Two decades into this odyssey, life has not begun to slow down. Shuker has just returned from a long run of tournaments in the United States at the time of our conversation, winning her 36th career singles title in Houston a day earlier. A few weeks before that, she clinched her 93rd doubles title in Baton Rouge. Between those triumphs, Shuker won the second Miami Open Wheelchair Tennis Invitational at the ATP and WTA event.
After a few fleeting days at home, Shuker left for her next challenge, but she lost in the women’s doubles final at the Japan Open in Fukuoka on Saturday. A busy clay-court season is next.
After all those years, she continues to compete and win at the top while finding meaning and enjoyment from the game. In other words, she continues to live her life.