Curtis McGrath’s words of hope for mates on song

The New Zealand-born para-canoeist has been on a ‘heck of a journey’ from stepping on a landmine in Afghanistan to leading out the Australian team in Thursday’s opening ceremony.

Curtis McGrath defends his KL2 and VL3 Olympic titles from September 6 at Vaires-sur-Marne. Picture: Nigel Hallett

Curtis McGrath’s legs were blown to smithereens by a landmine in Afghanistan. Then came a glorious round of piss-taking Australian humour: “Oh, mate! You’d do anything to go home!”

“I was like, ‘Thanks guys’,” he says. “Then as they were carrying me along, I knew if I could say something to give them hope – I said, ‘I’ll be right, I’ll just go to the Paralympics or something. It won’t be in the green and gold, though. It will be in the black and white.’ They shot straight back, ‘So, I suppose you want to walk to the chopper, then?”

Twelve years later, New Zealand-born McGrath, 35, is a three-time Paralympic and 10-time world champion para-canoeist. He’s co-captain of the Australian team in Paris marching in Thursday’s opening ceremony.

“We knew the role we were doing was considered very dangerous,” he says of his military duty.

“It was our job to make sure the patrol behind us had a clear path to wherever they were going. We were looking for explosive devices and homemade landmines. They’re incredibly lethal and incredibly difficult to find. They’re made to kill and maim objects and people.”

McGrath stepped on one in the remote Uruzgan Province.

“I was walking alone and went past this point I’d probably been past a hundred times in the last day and a half,” he says in Curtis McGrath: Unstoppable, to be aired on Channel 9 on Monday.

“Next moment, I’m on the flat of my back, looking at the sky. The dust sort of clears, it’s really dark. I sit up and look down and sure enough … I could see my legs were completely missing. Gone. There was just gallons of blood spraying out. You could see the shock on their (his army mates) faces. My trauma was now becoming their trauma.”

McGrath’s left leg was gone to smithereens just below the knee. His right leg was smithereens at the knee. He’d have bled to death without a fellow soldier wrapping tourniquets around his stumps.

“They bandaged me up and I could feel myself going into shock,” he says. “The blood-loss shock. The short, sharp breaths. A very high heart rate. Waiting was what I knew could kill me. It was the first time I realised, ‘crap, I could actually die. This is bad. Every second that ticks by is one second closer to death’.”

When McGrath feared the worst in Afghanistan in the following days, he wrote a letter to his partner, Rachel. Saying she would be OK without him. Saying that someone would come along and sweep her off her feet. Pun intended. He said that bloke would be the luckiest man alive.

The groom ended up being McGrath. They’ve just welcomed a son, Monty, into the world. Monty’s first requirement? Open heart surgery. They all soldier on.

McGrath defends his KL2 and VL3 Olympic titles from September 6 at Vaires-sur-Marne.

“To be seen as a leader is a great honour and a humble position to be in,” he says. “It’s been a heck of a journey.”