Photo: Kristen Holliday Kamloops author Sean Campbell teamed up with Greg Stewart, gold medallist, to publish a children's story about Stewart's early life, struggles with self acceptance, and his road to success at the 2021 Tokyo Paralympic Games. A Kamloops-based author has teamed up with Paralympic gold medallist Greg Stewart to write a children’s book telling the athlete’s story of self-acceptance and resilience. It is the second story in a series by Sean Campbell, who published a book in 2022 about his friend and former Kamloops Blazers captain Ajay Baines .
Campbell said he was working with Baines on his book in 2021 as Stewart won the gold medal in men’s shot put at the Tokyo Paralympic Games. The victory sparked the idea for the next book in the series. “I find everyone has a more complex story than what you know about them, or what you see about them.
And I had a hunch that Greg was like that, too. And that was very much the case,” Campbell said. He said Stewart, who was born with part of his left arm missing, was very open about his story and a theme emerged — struggling to fit in despite being successful.
“Even when he was achieving all these amazing things in basketball and in volleyball, and being a really well-recognized successful athlete — which often is how you are quite popular, that's when you fit in — he was like, ‘Everyone was really nice to me. It wasn't them. It wasn't the outside, it was fully internally, I never felt like I fit in.
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