The Paris Paralympics are nearly here and, apart from London, it will be the first Games in Europe for 20 years. I am looking forward to it. I’m also intrigued because I believe these Games will provide an important gauge of where the Paralympic movement is at, testing the awareness of disability sport and of disability issues in general.
I still think London 2012 was a bit of an anomaly because of what Seb Coe did with LoCog and Channel 4 with the broadcasting. There was a lot of clever advertising around it, using the fact that we in the UK love a touch of cheeky humour. It pushed at taboos, asking: what can we say about disability? Do we have to tiptoe around it? And it allowed disabled people to have a voice, to relay our point of view. One of the perspectives people had never really grasped before was the fact that, as disabled people, we take the piss out of each other. We gave C4 the permission to go with that. I think this approach elevated the Paralympics in London and we haven’t really had a chance to test the acceptance of disability sport or its popularity in Europe since then.
So I won’t be looking only at the numbers that come to watch in Paris. That depends a lot on how much the French have been prepared to publicise the Paralympics and how creative they’ve been trying to get the message out. For me it’s more about the passion, the understanding, the uptake that we’ll see from the French public during and after the Games. Compared to the Olympics we need to chase a greater legacy, simply because disabled people are much farther behind in society.
When you saw the Superhuman campaign in 2012 it was cool and in-your-face and it was also a tension breaker. We managed to create heroes and redefine what the British public would understand as a role model. This year I’ve been given the position of chancellor of Birmingham City University. I really can’t believe it and I don’t think it would have been possible if it wasn’t for 2012. What I’m interested to see is whether the French are able to harness something similar; to see if they really understand the power of engaging that disability hero factor.
I think it’s fair to say that since 2012 people in and around the Paralympic movement have been scratching our heads asking: where do we go next? I realised from some of the messaging I was getting on social media, from the people who were stopping me in the street who had disabilities, that they wanted the Games to effect social change. They were saying: ‘It’s all fair and well Paralympians being put up on a pedestal, but life hasn’t changed for us as everyday disabled people. We’re still being seen and used as scapegoats. We’re still being targeted and discriminated against and our standard of living is not improving, it’s going backwards.’
Should the Paralympics have a responsibility to address social issues? I think it should, but I’m wary it’s not for everyone. I don’t want to impose it on every Paralympian to say: “You must go out there and try to be political.” Not everyone’s built for that.
Unfortunately the Paralympics can’t tackle social problems directly. By empowering people like myself, by giving a platform and a voice to other Paralympians, it can do it indirectly because there are a privileged few of us now in a position where we have this power to try to affect change. But it’s a conundrum that is unique to the Paralympics. The Olympics isn’t burdened with that task.
We will see some progress at Paris because the standards of sporting achievement will never have been higher. Before the Games I’ve been looking at the stats. One of the people I looked at was Aled Davies who holds the world record in the F42 shot put. This is his third Paralympics but if you look at the distances he was making when he started and those he’s making now, I think he’s put on a metre. That’s a big deal. Improving your performance by that much is incredible and encapsulates the way Paralympic sport has developed.
When Aled started in 2012 he was a big unit. He won a bronze medal in the shot put because he was naturally talented. You would not even recognise him now in terms of his physique. He has completely changed his body type and that is because of the sports science, the resources, the money; everything that has come into Paralympics sport.
The irony is that the progress on the field has served only to highlight the lack of change in the ordinary lives of disabled people. But we’re going to see exceptional performances everywhere in the next two weeks; whether on the track, in the pool or on the basketball court. I urge any non-disabled person to look at the times, look at the distances, but forget about the disability. Ask yourself: if I was doing this, how would I compare?
