Welsh Paralympic legend forced to crawl off London train
Emily Price
Welsh Paralympic legend Lady Tanni Grey-Thompson was forced to crawl off a London train last night after staff failed to help her onto the platform.
The television presenter and peeress posted live updates to social media on Monday (August 26) documenting her experience with London North Eastern Railway (LNER).
After travelling from Leeds, the 54-year-old wheelchair racing champion arrived at London King’s Cross at around 10pm only to find there were no workers to assist her onto the platform.
Crawl
In a post to X, formerly Twitter, she said: “Hey LNER my train has arrived at KGX and there is no one to get me off.”
She continued to tag LNER in posts throughout the bank holiday evening in a bid to find someone to help her down from the train.
Shortly after her first post, she said: “Cleaning crew are on board.”
And minutes after that: ‘”Cleaning crew are now leaving the train!!!!”
20 minutes after Lady Tanni first arrived into King’s Cross, she said was forced to crawl off the train.
She posted on X: “Well I’ve just crawled off.”
Then she said: “At 22.17 (train got in at 22.02) I decided to crawl off. Had to move all my stuff onto the platform. Member of cleaning staff offered to help. They’re not insured.”
LNER’s Managing Director David Horne replied to post, saying: “My sincere apologies for this Tanni.
“Something has clearly gone wrong here and we’ve let you down. We’ll investigate what went wrong and share the details.”
Medals
The Paralympic champion from Cardiff was born with spina bifida which left her confined to a wheelchair from the age of seven.
She won 16 medals at the Paralympics including 11 golds during her sporting career before retiring in 2007.
The disability campaigner had made the trip to London in readiness to catch the Eurostar to the Paris Paralympics the next day.
Her social media posts were met with outrage on social media.
A LNER spokesperson said: “We are sorry to understand there has been an issue at London King’s Cross station on Monday evening.
“We are in the process of investigating this and are in contact with the customer directly.”
Support our Nation today
For the price of a cup of coffee a month you can help us create an independent, not-for-profit, national news service for the people of Wales, by the people of Wales.
How awful, and the train operators/owners want to reduce rail staff even further. Just as well we have the trade unions bravely fighting to get the rights of staff and the travelling public to be kept safe under the insane cost cutting/reckless operators.
She should obviously have arrived at Platform 9 and 3/4 where any number of wizards would have willingly helped her. Last time I travelled from Warrington to Cardiff by train with severely weak legs it was a nightmare.
A total utter disgrace. I hope TfW will now check it couldn’t happen here, even at our myriad unmanned platforms.