Gladiators on wheels

Wheelchair basketball is not so much slam dunk as slam bam. Squeals on wheels. Exciting to watch and even more so to play, with the emphasis, at the top, not simply on shooting and passing skills but on the nerve and dexterity required to manoeuvre a tailor-made [pound]4,000 piece of machinery in an atmosphere that can resemble a frenetic fairground drive on the dodgems.

Joe Bestwick, an engaging young man from Newark, is one of the niftiest British exponents of the art, destined, he hopes, to be among those on the podium at the Paralympic Games in 2012, where almost certainly the medal tally of Britain's able-bodied competitors in the preceding Olympics will be exceeded. But he knows it will be a rough, tough ride along the way.

"What I love about this sport is the physicality, the aggression," he says. "I didn't know much about disabled sport when I went into it, but now I really appreciate the battle, the blood, sweat and tears side of it, the team ethic, five people working together to win a game. It is a sport which by its very nature is abundant in thrills and spills. Anyone who plays the game hard and at a high level comes out with a few bangs and bruises, being caught by opponents' elbows and [getting] your hands stuck in the wheels. There are definitely people you can pick out, like you can in football, as hard men."

Born 22 years ago with are lower-limb disability, both feet deformed, he has repeatedly undergone operations to attempt to repair the position of his right foot and the length of his legs. His right ankle is completely fused and the left partially so. He can walk, but the action has thrown his hip and back out of alignment, which has led to a spinal condition which also limits his movements.

When he was 11 a letter was sent to his former primary school in Sheffield asking if they had any youngsters interested in trying out for wheelchair basketball, and this was passed on to him. He went along to a session with the Nottingham Jaguars, but decided he wasn't very good at it. Only when pressured by a coach into having another go did he begin to enjoy it. Eventually he got into the GB junior squad, aged 15, after being voted the most promising young player. He progressed to the national Under-23 team, who won two European Championships, and then to the senior team, winners of the Visa Paralympic World Cup in Manchester two years ago and runners- up last year.

He will be back in Manchester this week for the World Cup, though not in the team. Murray Treseder, the sport's new head coach, is resting him as he wants to give valedictory appearances to two veterans, Sinclair Thomas and Ade Adepitan, Bestwick's clubmate. But he also reckons Bestwick requires "toughening up". He says: "We have given Joe a pretty hard message in the last week or so. As I say, he needs a bit of toughening up."

He adds jokingly: "I've told him his girlfriend should get a dog, bring that inside, move Joe outside and give him the raw steak. If I hear him say 'Sorry' once more on court, he's going to get his arse kicked."

Treseder, as you might guess, is an Aussie, one from the in-your- face Bill Sweetenham Boot Camp school of coaching. A former top coach in able-bodied basketball, he has been lured here after making the Australian men's wheelchair team one of the most successful in the world, silver medallists in the last Olympics.

"The package they offered me was ideal and I'm thrilled to have the opportunity at working towards 2012," says the 49-year-old Melburnian. "The GB team has been unbelievably good but it is ageing and needs a rebuilding phase. Young people like Joe and others will be the future of what we do in wheelchair sport.

"I am constantly amazed by how physical the game is. These are big, strong, committed guys. In seven years I had with the Australian team, I never heard one of them bitch about their physical misfortune. They really get into it in a hard way, hard but fair. In this sport you have to get used to the smell of burning rubber from the tyres and of burning steel, frame against frame.

"They really are gladiators in a controlled way - immensely powerful and conditioned athletes. At the highest level wheelchair basketball is a helluva sport. It gets bugger-all coverage, and you need people at the top championing the cause."

One of them is the former sports minister Kate Hoey. She is vice- president of the GB Wheelchair Basketball Association. She says: "I remember meeting the women's wheelchair basketball team at the Sydney Paralympics and hearing of their struggle to get there. They had raised the money themselves to play all the tournaments to qualify for Sydney. They were wonderful sportswomen and their disability was of no importance whatsoever. I came back determined to help them fight for equality of funding and for greater recognition of the sport. The GBWBA is a growing association led by the dedicated Charlie Bethel, and the sport is at last on the map as one of the most exciting around."