Shah Rashid believes battling years of adversity has helped mould him into a student of the wheelchair fencing game. The Sheffield star can't wait to finally put that knowledge to the test at next week's European Championships in Cardiff.
A journey marked by setbacks
Rashid, 41, first started fencing at a talent identification day back in 2012. Years of hard graft, juggled with studying at Coventry University, followed before Rashid entered a two-year period of hugely rotten luck following a World Cup event in Cardiff in 2024.
The Bath-based athlete tore his abductor during a bout, scuppering his build up to the European Championships in Paris before further elbow injuries followed. He battled subsequent stomach issues to finish ninth at last year's World Championships in Iksan, South Korea, before developing a dangerous blood clot that has kept him out for the last 12 months of action.
Applying research on the continental stage
Rashid will make his long-awaited return to action in Cardiff next week having spent the last year working on a written document into sport he calls 'What High-Performance Means'. He explained his turbulent journey and admits he is champing at the bit to execute all he has learned on the continental stage.
"If I was able to understand all this a few years ago I probably would have been a lot better," he said. "But the issue is, to be able to understand it and implement it you need the foundation.
"Those years of doing the repetitions and all of that muscle memory enabled me to now put it together. If I had had the blood clot, elbow injury and stuff years earlier, I wouldn't be able to do the repetitions I needed to get muscle memory.
"The foundations were there to understand it all from a wider perspective – my technique is good enough to implement all this research and knowledge. The quicker you can ask the right questions, the quicker you can get the right answers and the quicker you can progress.
"Now that I'm one of the senior athletes, I look at my document and can work out where their biggest gains will be. The more I can see things from different perspectives, the more I can learn.
"Because of the shortcomings I've had, I now understand it all well enough, am more disciplined have a fundamental understanding of how to solve problems in sport. It's really exciting – I get to now apply everything I have put together.
"You problem solve and then you have to test it, and I haven't had the opportunity to test it. I've worked on this project, and now I'm getting to the point where I can test it out now, and not just test it out but test it out against the best in the world."
Home soil test in Cardiff
Next week's event will take place at the Sport Wales National Centre and marks the first time the European Championships have been held in Cardiff. Shah recently returned to sparring and has been leaning on the insight of Paralympic champions Piers Gilliver and Dimitri Coutya – two of the most experienced members of the Cardiff-bound British team – as he ramps up preparations.
A Europeans on home soil beckons and Rashid insists striking the right balance is key. "Cardiff is an exciting moment because I get to test this project of mine, but also it's on home soil," he added. "You try your best not to be goal orientated – everyone wants to win every competition.
"The thing that you want to try and focus on home is that process you've got written out for yourself. The question is can I stick to this, keep on task and not get distracted or deviate?
"But at the same time, see friends and people I haven't seen for such a long time – find that balance between enjoying the moment and staying on task. You need that enjoyment from the competition to stay on task – it's going to be an interesting one for me.
"I'm excited because I've worked hard on this project of mine, so I want to test it well."
The Para Fencing European Championships, supported by funding from UK Sport through The National Lottery, and Welsh Government, will be held in Cardiff on the 6th-11th October 2026, seeing athletes from across Europe compete in the first qualification event for the Los Angeles 2028 Paralympic Games.
