Will Reynolds discusses the Paralympics, highlighting the limited media coverage of disability sports, which amounts to about 40 minutes a day over four years despite 15% of the world’s population being disabled. He praises the Paralympics for its role in his self-acceptance and mentions athletes like Dave Weir and Lee Pearson as role models. Reynolds criticizes the patronizing media coverage and the lack of representation in mainstream sports. He notes the success of Paralympics GB in medals but criticizes the organization for cutting funding and the lack of accessibility. Reynolds also discusses the fear of losing disability benefits due to sports participation and the need for better support and visibility for disabled athletes.

I just wanted to have a bit of a chat about the Paralympics as it’s been on my mind. And I really just wanted to kind of let out all the stuff that’s been going on in my head. The Paralympics as a whole is a bit weird, isn’t it, because you’ve got so much coverage for that 11 days every four years. But then, if you look at it over the four years, that works out about, I don’t know, half an hour, 40 minutes a day of coverage of disability sport a year. Well, a day over the four years, which really isn’t enough, if you consider that 15% of the world’s population are disabled, and you know, the amount of people that do get quite a lot out of the Paralympics. It’s a weird one, because there are a lot of good things that come from it. From my point of view, I’ve been disabled my entire life, so that’s 30 years of disability.

And you know, finding ways of traversing the world and dealing with, well, disability, hate speech and all of that sort of thing, and bullying as a kid. So the Paralympics have been a really vital part of my acceptance of myself, I guess.

So there are people like Dave Weir who started competing in the Paralympics in 1996 and I remember staying up late to watch him in the Athens Games. And that was actually really difficult because it wasn’t really covered properly. You know, what Channel Four has done is great in comparison to what it was like, but there’s so much stuff that hasn’t happened and Lee Pearsons is also a hero of mine

They’re role models, and they’ve really helped me be who I am throughout my life. What they’ve done is amazing, and does make you feel kind of great. But there is also that thing that comes with the Paralympics, where, as a disabled person, it just makes you kind of sad, you know? Because I think we all know that that’s not the reality of what disability is for anyone.

I mean, you know, Hannah Cockcroft has actually said it, and Johnny Peacock have both been calling for more representation of Parasport in the wider media. You know, Johnny was saying, why aren’t we at Diamond League meets, which is one of the biggest athletics meets on the calendar. They did do that for a bit, but it completely fizzled out.

And they were mixing the categories and stuff, and so it basically watered it down. And what you have to remember is that this is elite sport, and they are elite sportspeople, and that’s an amazing thing that’s actually the thing that I love about the Paralympics the most.

I think if you ask the man in the street what they like, it’s the opportunity to watch more elite sport. Adam Hill said something interesting on the Last Leg. He said, Look, watching someone who can’t see do the long jump is more entertaining than watching someone who can see do the long jump because there’s more jeopardy.

So in terms of entertainment, of course, it’s more entertaining because there are more barriers to overcome. So in terms of a spectacle, I think the Paralympics has that, but the fact that it just goes away for four years sucks, but, you know it’s one of those things.

It’s a weird one. I have such mixed feelings about it because it does make me sad. We all know that no matter how great we feel about it, you know how wonderful we recognise their achievements, we all have to put up with the patronising way that it’s covered in the media.

It’s interesting that The Last Leg boys actually said this on an interview, pre-games, on Virgin radio. They said they offered the package of The Last Leg to other countries to export in the way that other television shows like Taskmaster have. But no-one picked up on it because it literally just wouldn’t play. They get huge amounts of backlash because you can’t portray disability from the point of view of the community at all in other countries, or so it seems.

I think that’s an interesting litmus test. They were talking about how they offered it to Brazilian television for the Rio Games, just to show with subtitles. And they just didn’t take it up at all because they thought that there’d be a huge amount of backlash. Whether that’s because it’s very uniquely British humor, I don’t know. It is very indicative of Britain as a whole.

And you know, as I say, I think it’s amazing what Channel Four have done with it, but I do think they can do a hell of a lot more. The fact that Paralympics GB has massively outperformed at the last four or five games in terms of medals has really let off off the hook Paralympics GB, the organizing body, because they are actually cutting funding.

they are able to see that, because they can still say, Oh, well, we want 124 medals, therefore we’re still the second best, and only China is beating us. And, yeah, okay, that’s fine. You know, if you do the maths, there are about 200 million disabled people in China, and there are about 15 million disabled people in Britain so if you do the numbers, that is a better ratio, considering GB have been second in the medals table, certainly every year since 2012.

I believe they were second in Beijing as well in 2008 so that has been a bit of a let off because they can just kind of coast along and continue to cut things.

They changed the categorization. That means that Paralympic athletes then lose the right to compete at the Games, which is, you know, above all, it’s the main way that they get paid. because there are obviously other para-competitions throughout the year, but there’s not the same amount of money going into them. There’s not the coverage.

So, you know, with television comes money, which means that they get funding. It’s all pretty much lottery based funding, and that’s, you know, criminally underused really, the fact that Dave Weir, who is one of the greatest Paralympians Britain has ever had, was using a chair that was massively out of Tate until really recently, and the only reason he was able to get a brand new chair was because he had a private sort of investor backer, like pay for it for him so and that didn’t come from Paralympics, GB,

I think it really just shows that they are papering over the cracks, and the fact that they’ve got a kind of generation of some of the greatest Paralympians the world has ever seen at the moment, his really kind of helping them paper over those cracks. But you know, Johnny Peacock’s kind of coming to the end. He is in the autumn of his career. Dave Weir has retired. Lee Pearson retired, recently. Hannah Cockcroft is 32. How long is she going to be able to carry on? You know, she’s probably got another games in her, because Hannah’s very driven. But Will Bailey’s getting on in sports terms. But then also, I think what’s interesting is that there are some people that are doing some really amazing things for the kind of visibility of disabled sport.

You know the fact that Adam Hills is doing the stuff that he’s doing for both physical disability, Rugby League and Para Standing Tennis is amazing. Like, I love Hillsey. He’s a really nice guy, and he’s doing amazing stuff. But the fact that he’s number two or three in Para standing tennis at the moment, and he won the European Championship doubles two years ago, and that he’s In the current Australian Rugby League squad at his age shows that there’s not enough people being brought through the pathway. There’s not the accessibility.

And accessibility just doesn’t actually get talked about. You know, Paris is not an accessible city. People were talking about the metro. What happened with Tanni Gray Thompson, literally having to drag herself off a train to get to the Eurostar. And the fact that it only really was news because it was Tanni Gray Thompson, so she was able to make it news.

But I know that that happens all the time. Everyone’s had that happen, or know somebody that that’s happened to within the community. It’s so commonplace that we don’t even bat an eyelid. But that’s bad, you know? I think it’s it’s also really interesting that throughout the games, they kind of do this thing where they set up a website that’s always different, and it always goes away pretty much immediately the games and where they kind of go, this is how you can get involved in disability sport, blah, blah.

But what they don’t realize is that so many people aren’t able to do that because, one, there is no kind of medium level of disability sport. It is either kind of, literally just some one that has a tandem bike or whatever, or a trike or whatever, you know, very, very low level, or you have to be already at the point where you can compete in elite sport. There is none of that medium level. But also, what nobody considers is that because of the way that the DWP are scrutinizing us as a community, hugely, people are scared to get involved in sport.

I have played a lot of sport in my life, but I stopped because I got scared of PIP because I thought, well, if you know if the PIP assessment comes along and I’ve got a gym membership or something, the DWP can check your bank statements in sort of extraordinary cases. But we all know somebody that that’s happened to, and it can. You live in fear of losing your disability benefit.

So yes, they can say that for the two weeks of the games, but actually no one’s going to do it, because in the long term, it is actually more detrimental to your life. But that in itself, is terrifying, because we’re putting off what is actually really good for you. It’s good for your mental health, it’s good for your physical health.

I have cerebral palsy, and everyone knows that you have to keep your body going as much as you can, because basically, with CP, when you stop, you stop, and it’s very hard to get it back, which is a really sad thing. I’ve probably let it go too long and I know loads of people in that position, I just think it’s a weird thing. The Paralympics just makes you kind of sad more than anything, as a disabled person.

I’d be really interested to know what other people’s views are on this whole thing, because I think that there can be a lot of good. I think the universality of sport is an amazing thing, and I think it can do great things for the community, because to be able to have a book make a difference, there has to be literacy and education and the ability to access the book and print media and so on and so forth.

But you know, to play football, you need a ball. You don’t even really need a ball. You need, like some rubber bands and and like some plastic bags, and you can make a ball out of that, or whatever, you know. And I think so from that comes that universality of sport. And I do think that having Paralympians be visible is a really important thing.

Sometimes they become the thing that actually makes our the rest of the community’s lives harder, in some cases; the fact that they’re using the current CEO of Paralympics GB Dave Clark, who played for the England blind football team and is an amazing guy and really cares about Paralympic Sport, but he’s very much the kind of friendly face of a really quite scary organization. And I, yeah, I don’t know. I’ve waffled on quite a long time, but I would be interested to know what people think anyway. Thanks very much. Guys Speak to you soon. Bye.