“It takes the difficulty of disabilities away for those few weeks” Paralympics Athletes past and present on how special the games are for people with disabilities
ParalympicsGB have enjoyed their best day for gold medals this century after winning 12 on Sunday. The team more than doubled their gold tally at the Paris Games, we spoke to a number of past and present Paralympians, to find out just how special it is to compete at the games.
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00:00a lot of individuals that went to London 2012 and said it was the best games ever. I think
00:06because it really incorporated what it was like to be British and all the good points of being
00:12British and London was a great city for those four to six weeks that the Olympics and Paralympics
00:18were on. It really embodied the kind of the history of the country, the coming together,
00:25the inclusivity of Olympic and Paralympic athletes and everybody was encouraged and
00:32supported to get to the events. The events were inclusive, the events were accessible,
00:39everybody came away with new experiences of what a person with a disability can do and not what
00:49the problems and the can't do for people with disabilities. We still need to do more. I still
00:54put on that GB tracksuit and I still feel kind of inspired to do more for the community but I'm
01:02also very grateful for the support that I've had up to this point. At the age of 14 after a lot of
01:08recovery and a lot of operations I discovered wheelchair basketball and that was kind of love
01:13at first sight in a way that it was the first time that I could play a sport without having pain,
01:18without having the fear of having pain in my leg or like destroy it or something. So from that
01:24moment on I knew I had a new dream. I found a new sport, it was wheelchair basketball and I wanted
01:30to go to the Paralympic Games and I wanted to win gold medals. When I say it, it still like sounds
01:35like a dream in a way that I still cannot believe that we actually did it but every time I'm allowed
01:41to say it I feel nothing less than proud. It's just yeah I'm so proud of the fact we achieved
01:47it as a team. It was just amazing because obviously it's a home games, you have all your friends and
01:52family there, you had icons that you know were representing GB at the Olympics before we went
01:57because it was amazing while we were still training. You know you get to watch the Olympians
02:01go, you get to watch them competing while you're still getting ready so it helps you build up, it
02:06like gets you really excited. Like for me when I first started wheelchair rugby there was only a
02:12real small handful of women in the whole of wheelchair rugby around the world, not just
02:19you know UK. So and there wasn't really many at club level, there was a few so I didn't really
02:24have many to look up to and then to be one of the only two at the Games itself was amazing.
02:29To be the actual first woman like I didn't even know that before we went to the Games, they said
02:32it to me in the media zone on the way out and they were like you do know you're the first woman to
02:36ever win gold and I was like no I haven't got a clue, I didn't realise. I was like can you fact
02:41check that before you actually say that you know. Sometimes it's hard, the guys are you know
02:47full of testosterone, throwing their weight around, their strength, they're really fast,
02:51they're you know they're really strong, it's different but at the same time I love it,
02:56they're just my teammates, they treat me the same, they always did which is amazing.