Around that time, her father gifted her a notebook so she could start keeping track of her race times at swimming meets. It was only a matter of years before she achieved her dream of holding British, European and world records, but it was the lows, not the highs, that made her constantly question – what if?
“It’s literally stayed in the back of my mind since then,” says Tai. “Sometimes, it’s been at the forefront of my mind when I really can’t do something and I knew if I was an amputee with a prosthetic, then I could. It was honestly just waiting for the right time.”
She is, however, aware that not everyone will understand her decision. When she first called her coach. David Heathcock, to let him know, “he thought I was crazy”, she admits.
“He just sat in silence for a bit and was like, ‘What?’ A lot of people thought I was insane, until I explained why. The only people that knew before I looked into it a bit more were my family because they were there during the whole process when I was younger. It’s a big thing to drop on someone.”
Not least if you are the coach of a para-athlete who was practically unbeaten in the pool. Tai is yet to discover how her new identity as an amputee will impact her classification, but insists reclassification never even entered her head when weighing up the possibility of amputation, which, she says, was “completely elective”.
Reclassification in parasport can be a source of huge anxiety – Tai admits she was initially hesitant about sharing news of her amputation publicly – but was quickly overwhelmed by kindness from the para-swimming community.
“There was a lot of ‘Welcome to the club’ comments and ‘See you poolside!’ So, that was really nice,” she says. “I was a bit scared about it because it was such a significant change and I don’t know who I’m going to be racing, so I didn’t know if people would get weary about it.”
In Tai’s case, there is the fascinating prospect that one limb down, she could actually swim even faster. “I think my swim speed might be better because I don’t have to drag my right leg,” says Tai. “My right foot was at 90 degrees and I couldn’t use it to propel myself. I’ve gained an imbalance and I’m not sure how much that’s going to affect me in the pool. The starts and turns are going to be affected because I’ve lost my push-off foot. I don’t know how that will balance out. I genuinely want to go back to the pool because I’m intrigued.
“My left foot is still affected with club feet. I have to get used to saying club foot and not club feet! So, they’ll have to take that into consideration. My left foot has fared way better with the surgeries I’ve had on it over the years, although it did get really arthritic.”
Should she be moved to a different category, such circumstances would not be unfamiliar territory for Tai, who used to compete as an S8 swimmer after being classed down from the S10 in which she made her Paralympic debut at the 2016 Rio Games, when she won 100m backstroke bronze.
It was in that same class that she stormed to seven individual titles at London’s Para-swimming World Championships in 2019, cementing her status as Britain’s breakout para-swimming star.
Eager to make a comeback at this summer’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, Tai pressed ahead and a date for her operation was set last month. She was forced to avoid the family home after her brother tested positive for Covid, so she rented a holiday house with her boyfriend for 10 days to complete her self-isolation before being admitted to hospital.
Her prosthetic leg will arrive in a matter of weeks, and as she entertains this thought, she reels off the things to do on her bucket list. “I can’t wait to walk with a coffee, through a park. Just really simple things – I’m excited to just go over the road to the local shop and be able to carry stuff in my hands and not have to shove it in my backpack.”
