How two elite sportsmen learned to live with a stammer

[Animous]

"I stammered, I blinked, I rubbed my eyes. I was just so embarrassed by it and a lot of the feelings that I had as a boy at school came flooding back to me at 28."

Just days before Kelly Brown captained Scotland at the Six Nations in 2013, he gave a BBC interview that was never released. Brown has a stammer, and that day it took over and he asked for the interview to be pulled.

A stammer is a neurological condition that makes it physically hard to speak. It is believed that up to 8% of children will stammer at some stage but most will go on to speak fluently. Stammering will be a lifelong condition for up to 3% of adults.

Brown was 11 and preparing to talk in front of his school assembly about a recent ski trip, when he first encountered his stammer.

"All day I was writing a script and I knew exactly what I was going to say," Brown told BBC Sport.

"When I stood up in assembly in front of the whole school - so probably about 100 kids and teachers - I just completely froze. I couldn't say a word, I couldn't say anything.

"I wasn't quite sure why, but I was lucky on that day because one of the teachers saw that something wasn't quite right and so they asked me a couple of questions and as a consequence I was able to get over the block.

"That's the first time I noticed that I spoke slightly differently."

Brown isn't the only high-profile sportsman who has a stammer. Brandon Shell is an offensive tackle for the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL. He told the BBC what it feels like to stammer, or 'stutter' as it is also known in the USA.

"I feel like when I stutter, the word is coming up from my chest and it just gets stuck," Shell said.

"I'm trying to get a word out and I can't. My breath kind of holds and my stomach pulls up and then I have to calm down to get the word out."

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