I'm A Paralympic Athlete, This Is What You Have Been Getting Wrong About The Paralympics
If you’re still feeling the buzz from the Paris Olympics this summer, we have fantastic news for you: The Paralympic Games Paris will be held from 28 August to 8 September 2024, with over 11 days of competition.
That’s right, 11 more days of watching world athletes compete in a range of sporting competitions back on our screens as soon as next week.
Additionally, just before they kick off, a new documentary Path to Paris: Paralympic Dreams airs on Sunday 25th August at 16:55pm on Channel 4.
The documentary follows five British athletes as they prepare for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games and offers a unique insight into how National Lottery players support them on their journey.
National Lottery players have transformed Athletics in the UK, with more than £300 million invested since National Lottery funding began. They support our elite athletes to win medals on the world stage and have invested in clubs, facilities and programmes across the country to enable more people to take part in the sport.
HuffPost UK spoke exclusively with Stef Reid, a British Paralympic long jumper and sprinter. Stef is a World Champion, four-time Paralympian, triple Paralympic medallist, and five-time world record holder.
At age 16, Stef was involved in a boating accident and suffered severe propeller lacerations. Her life was saved but her right foot was damaged beyond repair and amputated.
We spoke with her about the challenges and joys of being a Paralympic athlete, and what we can look forward to from the upcoming documentary.
The empowering reality of being a paralympic athlete
How do you feel that your disability does and does not hold you back in competing?
Stef Reid: I don’t ever feel like it’s held me back. I feel that it’s provided another layer of challenge and just a whole other set of variables that I’ve had to work through, speficially in terms of long-jumping and sprinting.
No matter how fit, how strong I was, if I’m not running on the best technology, I’m still not going to win.
You have to have this technology, this leg, that matches your physicality, and it’s hard and it’s exhausting. It’s part science, part art. There’s no formula to getting it right, you kind of just have to get out and explore.
We’re still very much in a pioneering age of it. If you think about how many athletes there are in the world that are full-time professionals, it’s not a huge amount of people. So, it is trial and error, it’s an adventure, it’s frustrating, but it’s exciting when you get it right.
It is tough! It’s not holding me back but it’s another source of adventure.
Is there a common misconception among able-bodied people about the Paralympics or disabled athletes?
Stef Reid: I think there are a lot of misconceptions, I think in particular, I pay attention to language and how people say things.
For example, if I’m in a gym working out and people say: “do you compete in the normal Olympics?” and I’m like “Oh! No actually! I compete in the abnormal ones.”
That’s what that language is signifying: that as a disabled person, it’s abnormal to do sport or to be strong.
I thought the exact same thing before I became an amputee. I became an amputee when I was 16 and so, I’m like “It’s okay, I know what you’re thinking.”
In my case, it took a life-changing accident before I started examining all of these assumptions. I had the opportunity thrust in my face because I suddenly was disabled.
Another thing is that you don’t have to have a disability to enjoy para-sport. Everybody can love it.
It’s also not the ‘Para-O-Lympics’, it’s the Paralympics. “Para” means parallel, it does not mean paraplegic. Again, I thought similar before, I don’t judge anybody who didn’t know this but the idea is that these events happen in parallel to one another.
They are equivalent but not the same.
What are you most looking forward to about the Paralympics?
Stef Reid: It’s my favourite time every four years.The paralympics is going to take centre-stage and the world is going to look at it, watch it, and remember how much they love it.
The thing is, it’s not enough for this to happen every four years, it needs to be something that happens more regularly. That’s part of the reason why I am so excited for our documentary.
Two weeks is not enough time to fully capture all of these incredible stories and what you see in this documentary, you see the love, you see the context, you see how awesome everything you’re about to see in Paris actually is.
It’s an insight that most people wouldn’t have had unless you were close to a [disabled athlete].
I genuinely hope that this sort of project, this sort of documentary, these sort of stories are picked out more and more.
In this case, it was fantastic that The National Lottery funded it, and I just hope that we have more opportunities for para-athletes to take centre stage.
Path to Paris: Paralympic Dreams airs on Sunday 25th August at 16:55pm on Channel 4