Lucy Shuker, 28, tennis player

In just five years, Lucy Shuker has become the British number one women's wheelchair tennis player. "Of all the girls going to the Olympics, probably none of them has the level of disability that I have. They have a lot more of their body that works." So what makes her the number one? "Sheer determination," she says. "And talent.

I love it. I train very hard and I seem to have the ability to do it."

In 2001, Shuker came off her motorbike. She spent 10 months in hospital. "The first time I got into a wheelchair, it was just horrendous," she says. "I suddenly realised that this is what my life was going to be like. It was awful. I remember crying for the rest of the day. They weren't sure if I had severed my spinal cord, but the day I got the results of the MRI scan confirming that I had felt like my world just crumbled."

In hospital, she met Peter Norfolk, the veteran wheelchair tennis champion, who encouraged her to try the sport. She had played badminton all her life, and now tennis became a way of rebuilding her confidence and gave her a focus. "Without it, I think I would have suffered a lot more. I would have got a lot unhealthier and possibly felt sorry for myself," she says. "I liked that I was doing a sport again. Just because you are disabled, it doesn't mean you can't participate in something. I love the playing, I love the training. And it opens your eyes when you meet people of all disabilities - you see people for who they are, not what they are. My friends and family have been really supportive, but it's probably only been the last two years that I felt I've really found 'me' again. I love my life now. Yes, it's different, and would I change things if I could? Probably. But it's a hypothetical question. It will probably never happen. You have to live with it and accept it and move on. I've dealt with that. It's just a part of my life - it doesn't define me."

Shuker, who lives in Taunton in Somerset, says she is playing some of the best tennis of her life. "I have beaten the world number two so, on my day, anything is possible and I have the ability to compete against the top girls. When I first started playing, it was my goal to get to the Paralympics. Then you think, 'I don't just want to get there - I want to win medals.' "

Darren Harris, 35, judoka

Four years ago, Darren Harris failed to qualify for the Athens games in judo, and decided that wouldn't happen again. "When I didn't qualify, I gave up my job in computer programming so I could do this full-time," he says. "It's kind of impossible to have a full-time job and get all the training in and take this seriously." He now trains every day, sometimes three times a day, and is one of four visually impaired judo athletes who will represent Britain in the Paralympics.

Harris started judo 10 years ago. "I liked the fighting," he says with a laugh. "It's that one-to-one thing, you against an opponent." He is too modest to list his achievements, but last year he won a silver medal at the European championships, and followed it with a gold medal at the German Open earlier this year. For several years, he was the captain of the England blind football team, although now he concentrates on judo.

Harris developed retina blastoma, a cancer of the eye, when he was two years old; the radiation treatment destroyed the tear duct and scarred the cornea, and his eyesight deteriorated. "I can see big things, large objects, and some colours, but not any detail," he says. What sort of effect has it had on his life? "It's probably been a blessing, really. When I was younger, I hung around with the wrong sort of people so it got me out of that." He insists that he doesn't feel he has missed out on anything.

Visually impaired judo means judokas have to have a keen sense of anticipation. "If you know someone is going to throw their arm over you, then you are kind of prepared for it. I know he will try to do it, I just don't know when - so you have to be alert and react fast enough. If you can see, sometimes your reactions are a little quicker - you know exactly where someone's coming from. I struggle with right-handed people grabbing me from over the top. If I could see that arm coming, I could stop it before he's got that grip. Sometimes it's harder breaking a grip than stopping it in the first place."

Is he nervous about the games? "I'm trying not to think about it. I can't worry myself about it.

I'm just trying to improve each day, and when I get there, that will be good enough."

David Wetherill, 18, table tennis player

This quaint community hall, clapboard painted in ice-cream colours, in a tiny village in Cornwall, is where David Wetherill's table tennis career began when he was 11. "My dad played here, so that got me into it," he says. "It's so fast and something I can play without too many limitations. I just love it. I get a buzz from table tennis. I used to think my dad was really good and I used to aim to beat him." It wasn't long before Wetherill was thrashing him.

Now Wetherill, who is ranked number nine in the world, plays against former international players at a larger club in Plymouth and trains for more than 20 hours a week. Table tennis is China's national sport and he knows that it won't be easy to beat the Chinese players. "You've just got to go and play," he says. "There's no point thinking about the result. It will be nothing like I've ever done before. I used to get nervous, but I don't any more. You can only do your best, can't you? I'm definitely able to win the gold medal.

"There's nobody who I think I can't beat so, psychologically, I think I'm in a good position. The pressure is going to be all on them. I'm not ranked or seeded to win a medal, so there is no pressure on me." Whatever happens in Beijing, it is London in 2012 where Wetherill hopes to hit his peak. He is the youngest of the 11 British table tennis players selected for the Paralympics. "With disabled table tennis it can be a lot more tactical because people have to play on their opponent's disabilities," he says.

Wetherill was born with a condition called multi-epiphyseal dysplasia, which affects the bones and joints. He had a childhood spent in and out of hospital - one of the reasons, says his mother Liz, why she thinks he has such determination and strength. "I struggled with my A-levels. I was really stressed out, and they probably suffered because I was training most days," he says, though I later find out that by "suffered" he means that he wasn't getting the straight As he was used to. "But this year with the Paralympics was always going to be the important year for me. Table tennis is my life, really."

Danny Crates, 35, 800m runner

Everything seems to be conspiring against runner Danny Crates. He has had a year of minor injuries and an ankle injury put him out for several weeks. Still, he is trying to remain positive. "To have got to 2008, and been the best shape I have ever been in, for it to go all so wrong is hard," he says. "It has been a really upsetting winter, but it wouldn't help me if I got down. You have to have a positive mental attitude and I'm mentally strong and a very determined person." Is he worried he might not make it to the start line? "No, not a chance."

If Crates's luck changes, and the training goes well, Beijing will be his third Paralympics, and he will be defending the gold medal he won in Athens. He describes that as "the ultimate moment in my sporting career. It wasn't just the medal - I had 30 of my friends and family out there with me. T hat's what makes it. I won bronze at Sydney and it wasn't enough. For the next four years, I had only one dream and that was to be a champion. I always set my expectations high. Second is nowhere for me.

I go out there to win."

Crates, from Essex, was 21 and working in Australia when a car crash cost him his right arm. "I came home and the first 18 months were tough, but I compensated for that by enjoying myself. I went out a lot and drank and partied hard. But I picked up my dreams again." He had been a promising rugby player, and six months after the accident he was back training on the pitch. "I had wanted to be a professional rugby player, but didn't have that determination to put in the extra training. But to see that disappear with the crash, you realise what you might have had."

He was persuaded to give athletics a go in 1997, and started winning international competitions in 1998. He trains twice a day, for 11 months of the year, and supplements his income with after-dinner speaking and motivational courses. "When I think of Beijing it's upsetting because I haven't prepared like I want to, but as long as I can get out and get running, it will be like this winter never happened. I'm fit and strong and I'll hit the track running. When you start to pick up and it clicks into place, it feels like you're floating above the track."

Does he feel he has missed out on anything? "There are obviously frustrating times. My wife and I have a nine-month-old son and that can be tough, knowing I won't be able to be as boisterous with him as other dads. But I wouldn't change it for the world. A few years ago, they did a hand transplant and I think they've since done an arm transplant. It's wonderful, incredible medicine. Would I consider having it done? Not a chance in the world. My life is about being an amputee now and I thoroughly enjoy it. Have you seen how fast the guys with two arms can run? It will ruin my career if you put an arm back on again."

He laughs. It has changed me. It has made me more focused and determined - my wife would probably argue I'm too focused and determined - but it has given me a drive to achieve."

Helene Raynsford, 28, rower

Helene Raynsford doesn't look much like a rower. At Caversham Lakes, the Olympic training facility near Reading, giant men and women mill around. Raynsford is tiny. "I do get mocked for having really short arms," she says, smiling. "But it's what you do in the boat, isn't it?" Such understatement: Raynsford holds the world record for arms-only single scull rowing and is tipped to win a gold medal at the Paralympics. Incredible, when you realise she has been rowing for less than three years.

Raynsford was 21, in her final year of her medical biochemistry degree, when she suffered a brain injury that devastated her body and has left her without the use of her legs. "I had to learn pretty much how to do everything again," she says. "It affected my memory, my fine motor skills. I'm really lucky: I made a massive recovery, and a lot of that is down to sport and getting active. If I hadn't, I would still be dependent on people. It took me a while to relearn skills, but I went back to university, I started working, I live on my own."

Raynsford trained at the Royal Ballet School until she was 17, which may be a hint as to why she is so disciplined. "You've always got to strive to be the best. This is the same - you have to eat, sleep, breathe it if you want to go all the way. But I despised playing hockey and rounders at school, so I've not always been sporty."

She had been playing wheelchair basketball, but discovered rowing when, as part of her job for the Department of Health, she went to Dorney Lake at Eton, where the world cup was taking place. "I didn't know you could row if you were a wheelchair user. I saw a guy in a wheelchair who was wearing a top with 'GB rowing' on it, and I asked him how he rowed. He said 'Why don't you come and have a go?' I started doing it in my downtime of the basketball season. I wasn't interested in competing - I just quite liked the idea of sitting in the boat, watching the ducks.

"In 2006, when I decided to switch to rowing, I wrote my new year's resolutions in my diary - along with stuff like not biting my nails, I wrote that I wanted to go to the world championships." She did and won the gold medal for the single-scull arms-only race, setting the world record. "Life is different now," she says, "if you look at it from going from the Royal Ballet School to being in a wheelchair, but I don't really see it like that. I don't think, 'woe is me'. That's what happened, and let's get on with it."

Now that razor-sharp focus is on Beijing, after a gruelling year training in all weathers. "I've had to put my career on hold for a bit. It's fairly full-on. Do you want to go out and party on a Friday night, or do you want to go to the Olympics?".