As an energetic eight-year-old, the thought first popped into Callum Dixon’s head: “When am I going to learn to read?”
His friends had begun to master it but, for him, the words wouldn’t stick together. He wouldn’t lose track of the letters, nor would they float around the page but he couldn’t differentiate a b from a d, a p from a q and an m from a w.
It is a predicament he still faces nearly two decades on in the build-up to the Paris Olympics. “I had that expectation that one day it would just click but I suddenly realised that wasn’t going to happen,” he recalled.
Not long after that, he was diagnosed with dyslexia. Even in adult life, reading a book or even a menu is beyond him, and he can only read a few words at a time on a page.
Born and brought up in Mile End, he estimates he spent three weeks in school before being pulled out – his mum suggests it was closer to three days – and he was homeschooled after that.
“As I grew up, every year or so there was re-evaluation do we think school is a good idea? I remember quite early on that I could either be normal in a special school for want of a better word, or be special in a normal school and neither one of those options appealed in any way.
“With the homeschooling, I’m sure there were days which probably ended with us all yelling [he was homeschooled with his brother and sister] but those aren’t the days I remember.”
The ones he remembers are learning about London as a Roman city on a BBC documentary and visiting walls in the flesh that still stood from that era the following day. “For me, it’s all positive memories,” he added, “helped by the fact my mum had the patience of a saint.”
To get both exercise and socialisation, he was thrown into every after-school club imaginable London and that was where he relished.
He looked to have found his slot with sailing and was part of the finn set-up within British Sailing set to take over from the likes of Ben Ainslie and Giles Scott before the class was scrapped from the Olympic programme.
Having relocated to Portland in Dorset as part of the squad, he needed another re-evaluation. “That was a shock which we didn’t see coming,” he said. “It was pretty heartbreaking.”
So, he moved back home and instead tried out his hand at rowing. His first time in a boat was at the end of September 2019, that day he remembers falling in 17 times. For much of the next few months, he kept on falling in before Covid struck and his foray into a new sport was put on hold.
He had the fitness and physical attributes needed to crack the sport just not the technical skills. “I remember thinking if I learn to row I might be ok,” he said. “All I needed to do was learn how to row. That became more manageable when I stopped falling in. I’d already ticked most of the boxes naturally to be a rower: right size, right weight, right background.”
His climb has been rapid, selected in the quadruple sculls where Britain is one of four realistic contenders for an Olympic medal.
It is also a livelihood where his dyslexia is not a feature. He knows what won’t always be the case and, while he doesn’t have sleepless nights thinking about it, the dyslexia does “affect how I think about the future. I’m sure that will present challenges”.
He has overcome many challenges, notably gaining a psychology degree from the Open University, an achievement arguably more impressive than becoming an Olympian.
“I’m proud of my rowing achievement but I had all the right opportunities,” he said. “Whereas with the university degree, there were a lot more things saying, ‘no way’. I had no other education certificate, I can’t read a single word basically. There were lots of things that said it probably wouldn’t work.”
