“Ruthless” boccia player David Smith keeps bold promise after missing date with Lara Croft

Smith does not wait to roll the first ball to show his opponents he is ready for a fight. His colourful mohawk sends that signal before the match even starts.

A different colour every time, the mohawk has become Smith’s trademark at the Paralympic Games, and an effective intimidation tactic.

“I’ve always worn a mohawk when I’m in competition just to show my competitors that I’m ready for the action, ready for the fight. It’s a bit like the traditional war paint,” Smith said. “It’s a little bit of, ‘I’m here, I’m ready to play, come and give me your best shot’.”

While Smith always sports a mohawk in tournaments, he only dyes it for the Paralympics to keep the novelty factor. At Beijing 2008 it was red, but then faded out to orange. At London 2012, it was pure red, while at Rio 2016 he switched to blue.

“I didn’t like the fact it went orange, so I changed it in London, made it a bit more red, better hairdresser,” Smith said of his dye selection. “And then went to Rio and went blue because there’s a bit of blue in the Brazilian flag, so I figured if I knock out all the Brazilian players then the Brazilian crowd might support me instead.”

The red-blue mix Smith sported at Tokyo 2020 was the most elaborate of all his tints thus far – but as it turned out, by accident.

“I wanted to do a blue-fading-into-red mohawk, but when I was in the hairdressers and they were dying my hair, I didn’t realise that they bleached the whole of my head, not just the top part, at which point it was too late to go back,” Smith said. “So it ended up being blue sides and a red top, rather than just a simple blue into red fade.”

Although Smith’s mohawk is a good intimidation tactic, it has another purpose as well – to bring luck.

Smith won five Paralympic medals while sporting the colourful hair: gold in the mixed team BC1-2 at Beijing 2008, silver in the mixed individual BC1 and bronze in mixed team BC1-2 at London 2012, his first individual gold at Rio 2016, and another individual gold at Tokyo 2020.

“It was a joke that Nigel [Murray] pulled on me, in Beijing. He said it was team tradition that we all dye our hair before the Paralympics to play, and I believed him being a 19-year-old,” Smith said.

“We ended up winning in Beijing, and then that became a tradition. And it just transpired that I happened to be winning medals at the same time, so I didn’t look like a tit for wearing that. If I was ranked bottom and had a mohawk, I’d look a bit of a fool. But luckily, I’m winning at the same time so I can pull it off.”