Luke Nuttall was driven to succeed at his second Paralympics by the memory of his late father John

Luke Nuttall regularly feels like he’s being watched. There’s nothing sinister or discomforting about the sensation, though. Quite the opposite, in fact.

When the going gets tough, it doesn’t take long for the 22-year-old to start thinking of his late father – the former Olympic distance runner and coach John Nuttall – who died suddenly at the end of last year.

Married to Liz McColgan and also father to the British international distance runner Hannah Nuttall, John’s passing hit the athletics community, and particularly his family, extremely hard. Luke is not about to pretend it didn’t leave a big hole in his life, but a wide smile spreads across his face when he describes the role his dad now plays every day.

“If there are sessions that are getting hard or any runs that I don't want to do, it’s like: ‘He’s watching you, you can't let him down’,” says Nuttall, whose mother is the double Olympian Alison Wyeth. “Given the amount of belief that he had in both myself and Hannah, I just feel like it’s giving me that extra push to do him proud.

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“If you’re churning through a winter session…you can’t give up because he’s watching all of your sessions now from up there. I was absolutely devastated because he meant so much to all of us but there's also been that other side where I've managed to use him as a lot of motivation for me.”

» This is an edited version of a longer feature that appeared in the September issue of AW magazine. To buy a copy, click here