Scott Meenagh's journey from paratrooper to Paralympian: "You'll never push the limit until you take yourself to the edge"

Mud, watery bogs, and steep rocky hills spread over a long distance – the ‘PARAS 10’ is a course so tough even Scott Meenagh’s comrades from the Parachute Regiment struggled to make it to the finish.

"It's a route that's designed to essentially select and separate the weak from the chaff. It’s one of the hardest courses the British army have, paratrooper selection," Meenagh told Olympics.com following his third attempt to complete the course since losing both his legs above the knee while on duty in Afghanistan. "What was crazy is, even though it's 14 years since I was first there and five years since I was last there, I feel like I knew every single stone in the place."

Retracing old steps, now on prosthetic legs, Meenagh ran up the rocky slopes and trudged through swampy water, sometimes alone, sometimes with the help of fellow paratroopers. Nearing the finish line, there was a delighted smile on his face.

"A wise man once told me that if you don't find your limit every now and then, if you don't go to them, you'll never expand them," Meenagh said of completing the course last month. "You'll never be able to push the limit until you take yourself to the edge."

Pushing the limits, as he did once again on that brisk day in North Yorkshire, is what Meenagh does best. Olympics.com spoke to the two-time Paralympian about the multiple ways he has defied the odds, from going through the rigorous selection process for the Parachute Regiment to making history for Great Britain in Para Nordic skiing, and the way he honours his army comrades along the way.

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Life lessons from the paratroopers: 'We always move as a pack'

PARAS 10 is once-a-year opportunity for the public to get a taste of the Parachute Regiment selection experience. The 10-mile march is one of the eight events that recruits take part in throughout test week known as ‘P Company’. 

As Meenagh ran the PARAS 10 course this October, soldiers he had never spoken to would come up if they saw that he needed help and get him over the obstacle. Then, just as quickly, they would give him a pat on the back and move on.

"That epitomises what the regiment are all about. It's all about the strength of the team rather than the strength of the individual," Meenagh said. "We always move as a pack. We always move at the speed of the slowest man. That was always the mantra."

Unconditional teamwork is one of the many lessons from his paratrooper training that Meenagh still lives by to this day.

Another is the lesson he and his comrades got on dealing with chaos.

"The paras never let you know what was coming. They never let you see the schedule. They never let you wear a watch. You had to just respond to whatever they threw at you," Meenagh recalled of the intense paratrooper training that saw only 14 out of 62 recruits in his class pass the full course.

"Some days it would be something really hard, fast, scary, aggressive, and other days it would be a mapping lesson and it'd be really nice classroom-based activities.

"So I think as a group we started to develop a bit of a mantra of, if we can wake up every day expecting and being prepared for the absolute worst-case scenario, if we wake up and be ready to deal with carnage and chaos, then any day that is not chaos is actually a nice, straightforward, easy day, then we are already ahead of the game. We're already winning."

Worst-case scenario: January 25, 2011

When it came to expecting the worst, January 25, 2011 fulfilled all the darkest expectations.

As a 21-year-old, serving his first tour in Afghanistan, Meenagh was sent out to collect the kit of a comrade who stepped on a improvised explosive device (IED) some hours before. After recovering the weapon and other parts of the kit, he was called back to his unit.

Meenagh turned around, took two steps, and felt himself being lifted off the ground.

Seconds later he saw the explosion itself. He was thrown onto his back, and looking down, he saw that his legs were gone.

His comrade Martin Bell, who was on the same mission was the first to reach Meenagh. He helped to stop the bleeding, while another four paratroopers rushed to their aid.

"The second that the bomb went 'bang' and in the moments after that, when I realised that I wasn't dead straight away and I knew that I had a chance, I had so much confidence to my core that my comrades would come and get me and that they were coming to save me," Meenagh said.

As Meenagh was hoisted onto a stretcher - Bell at the head - a second explosion sounded, worse than the one before.

Buried by mud and hearing his friends shout in pain, Meenagh kept his eyes closed as he started calling out names. Martin Bell was the only one who did not answer.

Another two comrades were blinded by the blast. The one who was least hurt got hold of the stretcher handles and helped drag Meenagh out of the minefield to the safety of a helicopter.

"Even those who were wounded, their number one priority was still to get their friends out of there that day," Meenagh said.

"We shared a 12-man room together for six months. We lived in each other's pockets. We knew everything about each other to our core because we'd spent infinite time together. The bond that we had was so close, and it was still the bravest thing I've ever seen. But I'm also not surprised that when my friend was blinded by the IED that he still wanted to get his friends out of there that day. And that is the bravest thing I've ever seen."

His comrades eventually recovered their sight. The man who Meenagh credits with saving his life, however, was confirmed dead.

"Martin was right beside me when it happened and he was the first one there against direct orders to stand still and not to advance any further in the minefield," Meenagh said. "He got to me and helped me to deal with my injuries, but also in doing so he spoke to me and we had some jokes. He brought a bit of humour back into the situation. In true Martin fashion he was always quick with a really sarcastic joke and some of the funny things he said in that field were his last words because seconds later, when he was carrying me back on the stretcher, he stepped on a device which killed him instantly.

"He physically shielded my body from the second blast and he took the impact of the blast and physically saved me from any further injuries and being killed."

Putting on a uniform again, now in skiing

Almost 13 years since that fateful day, the sacrifices and bravery of his comrades continue to be a guiding force for Meenagh on his life journey.

"It's not only Martin who gave his life so I could be here. I'm thankful for the decision that all those people made that day," the British veteran said. "I keep that in my motivation to do the very best that I can in everything I do because I want them to be proud of me and I want them to be proud of what I've made of the choice they took to save me."

Meenagh has done them proud, indeed, from captaining the British Armed Forces rowing team at the 2014 Invictus Games, and competing in track athletics at the 2017 edition, to waving the national colours that were once part of his army uniform at the world's biggest winter sports competitions as a Para biathlete and cross-country skier.

Not only has Meenagh reached new personal bests as an athlete, but he has also made history for his country.

At PyeongChang 2018, he was the first Para Nordic skier from Great Britain to participate at a Paralympic Games.

A year after making his second Paralympic appearance, at Beijing 2022 where he finished three races in the top 10, Meenagh won Great Britain’s first ever medal at a Para Nordic World Championship. He took silver in the 12.5km biathlon race in January despite skiing with an injury all year.

"My initial journey into sport was not about going to the Paralympics and aiming for the heights that I now aspire to get to. My first jump into sport after my injury was I needed a purpose," Meenagh said. "I needed a reason to get out of bed every day and I needed to get focused on something that helped me become slightly better every single day.

"That's evolved organically over the years I've found myself in the realms of high-performance elite sport, and I've really been motivated and bitten by the bug of wanting to be a better version of myself every single day. And I love that."

A team leader left without a team

With Meenagh coming off his best season so far, what would have made the triumph even more exceptional would be sharing it with his teammates.

That, however, was not to be.

The team had grown from Meenagh being the only British representative in Para Nordic at PyeongChang 2018 to five athletes at Beijing 2022, including the country’s first female Para cross-country skier Hope Gordon. But despite achieving their best ever result in Zhangjiakou, the funding for the Para Nordic programme was cut at the start of the following season.

Meenagh and the other athletes received letters congratulating them on their retirement.

"They took all the funding away and every one of my teammates and everyone who we brought and built the team with, and built the sport with, overnight, lost their jobs, lost their part on the team," Meenagh said. "What we created had been torn apart very quickly."

Meenagh himself was on the edge of retirement until he received some support from private sponsors. He went to the 2023 Para Nordic World Championships in Ostersund, Sweden with two coaches who funded their own way and prepared for the races with the help of a local ski waxer who did him a favour.

As Meenagh crossed the finish line for silver, one of his coaches got his former teammates on a video call and they celebrated the historic moment with the skier.

"We had some of the guys on [the call], but it just felt so different, them not being there," Meenagh recalled. "We were robbed of a really special moment."

In honour of teammates and comrades

Winning a silver medal at Ostersund led to Meenagh’s own funding being reinstated until Milano Cortina 2026. The same benefit was not extended to his former teammates, however, and Meenagh continues to fight for them with the same ardour that his paratrooper comrades once fought with for him.

Those comrades also remain in Meenagh’s thoughts, no one more so than Martin Bell.

The Para Nordic skier started an annual workout in honour of Bell’s legacy several years ago. Over time it has evolved from a small activity in the local gym to an accredited CrossFit workout that is available to people around the world every January 25.

"The reason why we did it in the first place was to try and take away some of the sadness and some of the morbid nature of the day and do something positive to remember Martin, to remember his sacrifice," Meenagh said of the workout which is featured on CrossFit together with the story of Bell's sacrifice.

It is inspired by some of the exercises that Meenagh and Bell's regiment did in the Afghanistan desert, with a personal twist.

"Some of the exercises, the movements that have been added, reflect the day and the action of what Martin and myself were involved in on the 25 of January," Meenagh said. "It's meant to be tough. It's meant to be a workout that will fatigue you pretty heavily at the very start and it's supposed to embody the challenge of something really, really tough happening at the start.

"The hard work's right at the very beginning and so you're pre-fatigued and then you have to stay with it and that's where the character comes in. You have to work hard through character and not through strength throughout the rest of the workout.

"The response has been really great. People do look forward to the workout and they come back every year and do it again, so we're doing something right."