Melissa Reid is a professional paratriathlete from Cornwall, England, who races blind in one eye and partially sighted in the other. She competes in the Tri-6 category against athletes with comparable vision loss, accompanied by a guide through all three legs of the race — and wears blacked-out glasses on top of her existing impairment, so that every athlete in her class races at the same disadvantage.
Melissa first tried triathlon almost by accident. After she was turned down for a lifeguard job because of her eyesight, she decided to enter a triathlon in Hyde Park in 2011 instead. She had always believed she could hold her own against able-bodied competitors, and had already picked up medals in multi-sport races, but it was paratriathlon that let her prove it — finishing second at the ITU World Championships that same September.
Before triathlon, Melissa competed at a high level in surfing, sponsored for several years, and represented Cornwall in surf life saving for three seasons. She still surfs for fun and treats it as cross-training alongside her swimming, cycling, and running. None of it would have been possible, she says, without her guides Alice Nicholas and Nicole Walters, her coach and mechanic (and father) Allan Reid, and Matthew Stone, who has managed her fundraising and publicity.
Coaching has been part of Melissa's life since she was young. She teaches at Gyllyngvase Surf Life Saving and Triathlon Club, works as a Beach Lifeguard trainer, and holds an ASA Level 2 award teaching swimming at TR1 Swim Club — working with everyone from toddlers to adults with a fear of the water to international competitors. She also speaks at schools and businesses across the UK, from small primary assemblies to a keynote in front of 200 business leaders at the Cornwall Hub Awards, and has guest-lectured at Imperial College London and Cornwall College.
Melissa is the reigning Paratriathlon World, European, and British Champion, the reigning World Aquathon champion, and a two-time British Duathlon champion. She was named Cornwall's Young Coach of the Year in 2012 and the BBC South West Disabled Athlete of the Year in 2013, and has been shortlisted for national coaching and para-athlete awards in both England and Britain's triathlon scene.
As a World Champion and ambassador for the Royal London Society for Blind People (RLSB), Melissa helps promote the charity's Sports without Limits programme, which aims to get young blind and partially sighted people into sport — something she credits with building confidence and breaking the isolation that often comes with sight loss. She also supports the Cornwall Sports Partnership's work bringing physical activity into everyday life across the county.
"My goal is to represent Team GB in the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro," she says. "Together with my guides, Alice Nicholas and Nicole Walters, I am training hard to make it. I have won gold at the World, European and British Champs." For more on RLSB, visit www.rlsb.org.uk; for the Cornwall Sports Partnership, visit www.cornwallsportspartnership.co.uk.