Andy Grant embodies Liverpool F.C.’s fighting spirit and the famous wit of the Premier League club’s fans.
Grant, a member of Great Britain’s Royal Marines, is drawing inspiration for his budding career as a runner from an alteration to his Liverpool tattoo, the BBC reported in February.
Grant, a 26-year-old Liverpool supporter, originally had an image of the Liverbird and club anthem lyric “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” tattooed above his right knee, but surgeons amputated the lower part of his leg after he stepped on a land mine in 2009 while serving in Afghanistan. The amputation procedure cut “Alone” off Grant’s tattoo, leaving him with an ever-present reminder of the challenge he faced at the outset of his recovery.
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Grant took the tattoo change as a challenge. He relearned how to walk years ago and now runs competitively with the help of a running blade.
“I am a huge Liverpool fan so had the Liver bird and the words to the song You’ll Never Walk Alone on my leg,” Grant told Metro, according to the BBC. “The tattoo that I have been left with has always been a bit of a joke. I use it in my motivational speeches.”
Grant won two gold medals at the most recent Invictus Games and is pursing a world-record time over 10 kilometers.
“It is ironic that it says I will never walk as I have gone on to run 10 kilometers in 40 minutes,” Grant continued. “At the moment I am just two minutes off a record for the 10 km for a single leg amputee and I have that in my sights.”
Grant sheds no tears over the loss of the last word in his tattoo. In fact, he takes some comedic delight in it.
“It is bizarre, and I just laugh about it,” Grant said. “But it adds to my story I guess.
“The fact is that regardless of what the words says, the operation allowed me to walk and run and do so much else. You have got to see the funny side of it.”
Thumbnail photo via Twitter/1001ptsUK
