Pod Insights ABC Rewind The paralympic journey | Money, media and ethics | Part 2 About this episode Gold medal winning Paralympian and coach Louise Sauvage tells the controversial story of classification at the Paralympics and the fallout from Spanish intellectually impaired basketballers who faked their disability at the Sydney 2000 games. We meet champion swimmer Siobhan Paton whose dreams of winning future medals were shattered when all the intellectual disability categories were cancelled.
An advertising campaign at the London 2012 Paralympics portrayed competitors as superhuman and kickstarted a change in visibility and respect for all disabled people.
Today the games and some competitors attract big money and sponsorship deals but wheelchair racer Angie Ballard reminds us that it’s still a physical and financial struggle for many.
Transcript 4,641 words · 26 speakers
0:00 Speaker 00 ABC Listen Podcasts, radio, news, music and more.
0:09 Speaker 01 I'd never thought I'd live to see the day that 18,000 people would come and watch a wheelchair basketball game.
0:15 Speaker 02 Australia playing in both the sitting and standing volleyball. Intellectually disabled basketball.
0:21 Speaker 03 As long as people compete, they'll cheat. Classification is an issue that just absolutely haunts Paralympic sport and still has a long way to go to be satisfactorily resolved.
0:32 Speaker 04 Eighteen-year-old Louise Savage was Australia's most successful track and field athlete, breaking two world records on her way to three golds and a silver.
0:41 Speaker 05 I've done much better than I ever hoped for and dreamed for. I'm Louise Savage. Welcome to the second part of the Paralympic journey. I'm a wheelchair track and road racer. I competed in four Paralympics and won 13 medals. The Paralympics today are a big spectacle, a long way from their role as rehab for injured World War II soldiers. Now they're a place where dreams are realised in front of huge crowds and there's big money involved.
1:10 Speaker 06 Those chairs are around at the moment worth 50 grand. You're not going to get a chair like that unless you're sponsored. So that means only a very select few are able to push in the best technology.
1:21 Speaker 05 The Paralympics has had a lot of milestones since its beginnings in 1948. I'm totally biased, but Sydney 2000 really was the big game changer. It was the first time both the Olympic and Paralympic Games organising committees came together and collaborated. So we had the same facilities, the same opportunities. Sydney gave the Paralympics the status it deserved and helped the rest of the world see the Games as they are today. But it's still evolving.
1:53 Speaker 02 Indeed, last night, the biggest crowd ever for a Paralympic opening ceremony gathered here at Stadium Australia.
1:59 Speaker 05 It was also the first Games where lots of us had corporate sponsors, and with that status came expectations.
2:06 Speaker 02 But we start at the Olympic Stadium, where finals continue today on the track, including Australia's Louise Savage in her favourite event, the 800 metres.
2:16 Speaker 05 In 2000, I was at the point in my racing career where expectations were super high. I'd had my best Games in 1996 in Atlanta. I won four gold medals, so I was pretty stressed in 2000. The Sydney Games also made history because of the reaction we got from the Australian media and the public.
2:37 Speaker 02 As Sydney embraced nearly 4,000 athletes from over 120 countries.
2:42 Speaker 05 An important thing to understand about the Paralympics is the classification system. Athletes get classified by assessors, who test their impairments and then assign them to a category, so they're best matched with other athletes. One sport could have multiple categories. Over the years, classification has been controversial because it's not an exact science, and some people have tried to game the system.
3:07 Speaker 07 The Spanish basketballers were stripped of their medals. When it was revealed all but two players in Spain's gold medal-winning intellectually disabled basketball team should not have competed in Sydney, the Paralympic movement went into a tailspin.
3:20 Speaker 05 Swimmer Siobhan Payton experienced a brutal crash-landing after taking away a bag of gold medals at the Sydney 2000 Games. Something happened at these Games that had nothing to do with Siobhan, but the scandal wreaked havoc on her life for years.
3:35 Speaker 08 Payton shot to fame after claiming six gold medals in the pool at the Sydney Paralympics.
3:42 Speaker 09 The entire crowd is standing and applauding Siobhan Payton.
3:46 Speaker 10 Hi, my name is Siobhan Payton. I'm 39 years old and I was Paralympic of the Year for 2000 and won six gold medals individually.
3:59 Speaker 05 Siobhan competed in swimming's intellectually impaired classification. She has an intellectual disability.
4:06 Speaker 10 It's a brain mental dysfunction.
4:13 Speaker 10 It occurs at birth.
4:16 Speaker 10 It could also occur if you have a car accident and stuff like that. But mine was due to a lack of oxygen at birth, so yes. It affects my everyday life because I'm slower at grasping things, mentally challenged.
4:38 Speaker 05 Siobhan also has Ella's Danlos Syndrome, or EDS. It affects the body's connective tissue, which means her ankles and knees are weaker than the rest of her body, and her limbs are hyperflexible. She told our producer Sarah Allerly that the best therapy for EDS is swimming.
4:56 Speaker 10 So the professor basically told me to swim, so we swim I did. And my coach noticed me being slow in the uptake of grasping the drills and stuff. And that's how I was introduced to the Paralympic world, was via my swim coach.
5:19 Speaker 05 And how old were you then?
5:21 Speaker 10 Thirteen.
5:22 Speaker 05 So this was when Siobhan was classified as an intellectually impaired swimmer. Only four years later, she was in the pool at Homebush for the 2000 Paralympics.
5:32 Speaker 10 I heard the words "go, go, go" from the crowd and I just went. Touch first, couldn't believe it.
5:42 Speaker 10 One of the happiest memories I have of touching first, of winning gold.
5:49 Speaker 05 How long did it take you to register that you'd won?
5:53 Speaker 10 It took me a while because everybody was screaming, "Yay, yay, good on you", "What do you mean, you won?" Holy shit, blimey.
6:07 Speaker 10 I won!
6:09 Speaker 05 How did it feel to win the gold medals?
6:13 Speaker 10 Exciting, real. Making me feel like I was a true champion. And very excitable. At 17 of age.
6:25 Speaker 05 Siobhan was the golden girl of Australian Paralympic swimming in 2000. She was told the world would be her oyster. But instead, her life took a very different direction.
6:35 Speaker 07 The Spanish basketballers were stripped of their medals. They were 12 golden days last October. Australia's Paralympians swept to the top of the medal table. The intellectually disabled members playing a vital role. But when it was revealed all but two players in Spain's gold medal winning intellectually disabled basketball team should not have competed in Sydney, the Paralympic movement went into a tailspin.
6:58 Speaker 05 Some members of the Spanish basketball team pretended to have an intellectual disability.
7:04 Speaker 05 They'd cheated in the most blatant way.
7:06 Speaker 10 I didn't find out until the day that we were doing the Canberra parade. And there was whispers on the bus that Spanish basketballers cheated. Nobody was telling me what was going on. Was it true? Was it not true? Once I found out it was true, very upset, very angry. Despised my medals. But I had to put a pleased smile on my face because we were at an event.
7:37 Speaker 10 And Bob's the uncle. It was very disturbing that someone could... Some people could just do that to line their pockets.
7:48 Speaker 05 It's unclear exactly what the motivations of the Spanish intellectually impaired basketball team were. A cheeky medal grab? Maybe a publicity stunt? Or a test to draw attention to issues of classification generally? One of the cheats was actually a journalist, who blew the whistle and claimed only two of the players were legitimate.
8:09 Speaker 11 There are wider accusations of cheating by the Spanish, with a newspaper report claiming that at least 15 able-bodied athletes were included in their team. Spain finished third on the medal tally at the Paralympics. Now, the International Paralympic Committee is being urged to investigate all the cheating accusations.
8:28 Speaker 12 It does put into question the movement. It does put into question, you know, all athletes with an intellectual disability.
8:34 Speaker 11 Grappling with the tightening of the entry rules, the international body has suspended all intellectually disabled athletes.
8:41 Speaker 05 Siobhan was legitimately classified, but the Sydney scandal wrecked the credibility of the whole intellectually impaired Paralympic community. Intellectual impairment was removed as a classification by the IPC, the International Paralympic Committee. That ban lasted for 12 years.
8:59 Speaker 10 Basically, we were guinea pigs with hope, saying that we might be in 2004 Paralympics. We were very angry and very devastated because we all thought that nobody wanted us. Well, this is what I thought, that nobody wanted us, nobody cared.
9:20 Speaker 05 Siobhan didn't compete in the Paralympics again.
9:24 Speaker 10 No. After that, I thought my time had come and gone.
9:31 Speaker 10 I did extremely well at my first ones.
9:36 Speaker 10 Was hoping to back it up in Athens, maybe Beijing.
9:41 Speaker 05 And you set a world record, didn't you, at the Sydney 2000 Olympics?
9:45 Speaker 10 I set...
9:49 Speaker 10 10 Paralympic records and 8 world records.
9:54 Speaker 05 Siobhan was one of many intellectually disabled athletes around the world whose sporting careers were disrupted or even destroyed by the Spanish basketball team's cheating stunt. It wasn't until London 2012 that the IPC managed to bring back the intellectually impaired classification. Siobhan's experience was that she found it hard to get reclassified and her mental health suffered.
10:20 Speaker 10 I was hospitalized for six weeks with depression and anxiety. A lot of different therapists and a lot of different medication to find the right one. Now I have a great team behind me, so I'm on the road to recovery, according to them.
10:40 Speaker 05 Siobhan's finally easing back into swimming as part of her support plan.
10:44 Speaker 10 Now I feel that I'm great with my medals, but before I just could not look at them. I felt disgusted.
10:52 Speaker 05 Siobhan's rummaging around in a drawer, looking for her medals.
10:56 Speaker 10 So when the Spanish basketball team cheated, there was a big media coverage and I would be the face of the intellectual disability group as such, because I won six individual gold medals. And I just couldn't look at them because I felt I was depressed.
11:23 Speaker 05 Even though no one accused Siobhan personally of cheating, she says it was her name and face that the media kept using in the stories about the Spanish basketballers. But winning gold stays with her. There's a photo in her dining room of the Athens 2004 Australian Olympic swim team. Siobhan's sister Sarah was in that team, along with Ian Thorpe, Michael Klim and Grant Hackett. Was she younger or older? Younger. So you might have inspired her then? I hope so.
11:58 Speaker 05 Classification comes up a lot when you're talking about the Paralympics, because the games are kind of all hinged on figuring out levels of disability. And while there hasn't been a controversy as dramatic as the Spanish basketball team in 2000, there have been reports of coaches and athletes exaggerating impairments while they're being classified. And it's tricky, because people's impairments can change over the years, and so some Paralympians have to be reclassified.
12:26 Speaker 03 As long as Paralympic sport's been played, there've been suspicions of people cheating, there've been people cheating.
12:32 Speaker 05 Paralympic historian Tony Nah brought up classification too, when our producer Sarah met with him. Tony worked for Paralympics Australia from 2000 until 2020.
12:42 Speaker 03 There's multiple events in the 100 metres athletics for men. And the reason is that athletes are divided according to their level of impairment, to make it as fair as possible. So you won't have a person in a wheelchair competing against a person who's missing their hand, for example. But that means that when you're putting people into classes, there's always borders or edges where people could be in one class where they might be uncompetitive, but if they're in a different class, they might be more competitive. And of course, people are looking to be as competitive as possible and have the best possible chance. There are attempts to make it as exact as possible. And you have very, very experienced people doing classification, and they don't always get it right.
13:27 Speaker 03 And if athletes make it very difficult for them, and there are ways to make it very difficult for them, then that can be unfair as well.
13:35 Speaker 13 What about coaches making it difficult too? Because there has been reports of coaches encouraging athletes to make it difficult for the classifiers.
13:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, as Paralympic sport becomes more desirable to win, then it's more desirable for everyone to win. Not just coaches, but administrators, everyone. You know, gets kudos and gets funding from results. And if results bring funding, it's the same in able-bodied sport, it's the same in almost any human activity. There are a group of people who will cheat.
14:04 Speaker 13 When you were working with Paralympics Australia, did you hear about misrepresentation in classification or cheating going on in Australia?
14:11 Speaker 03 I mean, I know of cases where people have changed their lives and changed the way they interact with others.
14:22 Speaker 03 For the benefit of their participation in sport.
14:24 Speaker 13 And did they actually go to the Paralympics?
14:26 Speaker 03 You hear rumours.
14:29 Speaker 03 So, yes, you hear rumours about people.
14:32 Speaker 14 It is very easy to exaggerate in a classification. And there are people who are just doing it because they're not winning in their classification. They want to compete in a classification that they can win in.
14:45 Speaker 05 The ABC's Four Corners program reported in 2023 that intentional misrepresentation among Paralympians was a problem in Australia and around the world.
14:56 Speaker 15 In 2016, the IBC investigated more than 80 athletes for intentional misrepresentation.
15:04 Speaker 16 There are still athletes currently who are misrepresenting their abilities, not only in this country, but throughout the world. It's problematic because they are protected.
15:17 Speaker 05 That was Jane Buckley, former Paralympic classifier, talking to Four Corners.
15:25 Speaker 05 Wheelchair table tennis coach and Paralympian Dani De Toro has seen a fair bit in her 35-year career.
15:32 Speaker 17 Classification is really difficult. It is not a perfect science.
15:38 Speaker 17 It's really hard to find multiple people with exactly the same functional ability. There's definitely been a history where people have kind of gone, oh, where's the line and how can we kind of move over it? And, you know, those things, I think the general public have seen that. You know, every couple of years, there's lots of gaps in the way that kind of classification works in general that I think could be really worked on. From a spotlight table tennis, it's changed over a lot of period of time. There are people I played tennis against 20 years ago that wouldn't be able to play today.
16:09 Speaker 05 Dani means these athletes wouldn't have qualified for the Paralympics under today's standards. More impairment is required now, hopefully making it harder to exaggerate.
16:20 Speaker 17 That minimum disability level, you know, like that it's not considered, I guess, disabled enough to kind of be participating or competing.
16:30 Speaker 05 I think Dani's right.
16:35 Speaker 17 Well, I'm at the contact a bit lower. But the contact's here, it's really hard to control that. If I can get it there, then I can get, I can get some movement.
16:44 Speaker 05 The Paralympics has come a long way since its origins as a rehab activity. And the more elite it's become, the more money's involved. The athletes of today, like Madison Di Rosario, who I coach, race in chairs that are built for speed. They have three wheels and they're made of carbon fibre. They're lightweight and aerodynamic. Their chairs are worth more than my car. We're talking around $50,000. When I first started competing, the chairs all had four wheels and were similar to the chairs that were used off the track. They didn't have any form of steering and at high speed, the front wheels wobbled. We thought we were fast back then, but well before I
17:29 Speaker 05 came on the scene, Kevin Coombs was competing in a chair even more basic.
17:34 Speaker 01 We didn't have corporate sponsors and we were pioneers, I guess, and we're the trailblazers and we were setting the pace.
17:41 Speaker 05 That was Kevin Coombs in 2000. But back in 1960, being a person with a disability and being a Paralympian was very different when Uncle Kevin competed in wheelchair basketball in Rome.
17:54 Speaker 18 And they used to treat us as a poor relation, really.
17:58 Speaker 05 Back in Australia, Kevin had years of feeling like a second-class athlete. Here he is a few months before he died in 2023.
18:06 Speaker 18 We were beggars. We used to chug tins outside of footy grounds in freezing cold. But nowadays, you just go in, train, go out. When we used to train at basketball, we'd have to sweep the floors at the stadium, then train, and then go.
18:22 Speaker 05 By the time we got to Seoul in 1988, some money had started to trickle through for the Paralympics, but not enough.
18:30 Speaker 09 The only sour note for the team is that the million dollars raised isn't quite enough, and they're leaving for Seoul in debt.
18:37 Speaker 19 We're behind by about $50,000 to $60,000. So we will be continuing to fundraise even after we wave goodbye to the team.
18:45 Speaker 09 The athletes are still hoping for some last-minute sponsors, or perhaps some extra funding from the federal government.
18:52 Speaker 18 It was pretty hard in those days, but it's all changed now. The Paralympic movement has just gone from strength to strength. And I think when Channel 7 got behind it and the corporates come on board, that's been marvellous.
19:07 Speaker 20 I think the Paralympics represent changing perception of disability by using sport as the vehicle. And using sport as a vehicle to change people's lives as well.
19:18 Speaker 05 Kate McLaughlin from Paralympics Australia is the chef de mission. Basically, Australia's team boss for the Paris Paralympics.
19:26 Speaker 20 Once every four years, the Paralympic Games shines a light on the ability of these amazing humans. It just reminds people of what's possible and not to just push these people away as, oh, they've got a disability and they're not able to participate in life in the same way an able-bodied person can. When parents of kids with disabilities see people on the world stage competing in sport and seeing athletes like their kids doing these amazing things, it just changes their sense of what's possible.
19:57 Speaker 05 Of course, a very small percent of people with disabilities end up being Paralympians.
20:03 Speaker 20 I know at times the disability community, those that aren't involved in sport, sometimes don't necessarily like what the Paralympics stands for sometimes around elitism. And by the very nature of Paralympic sport, it's exclusive and it's like the Olympics, isn't it? It's the best of the best. But I still feel like there's that element where the Paralympics hopefully identifies massive opportunities in the community as to how people with disabilities, you know, they contribute in such amazing ways, whether it's in sport, in the arts, in employment, and hopefully opens people's minds to what's possible. And yeah, their perceptions change.
20:43 Speaker 00 Definitely, definitely. I've seen it shift. I feel like, yeah, without the Paralympics, I feel like you wouldn't have as many positive people in this world with disabilities. I don't believe you'd have as many people in Australia coming out saying they have a disability.
21:00 Speaker 05 Riley Batt's a wheelchair rugby champion. He's won two gold and a silver at five Paralympic Games.
21:07 Speaker 00 You know, I wheel down the street and any town I could be in, they come up to you and go, are you Riley Batt? And I don't like that. I don't like the recognition because I'm a very modest person, but...
21:19 Speaker 00 They're not just looking at, I guess, people with disabilities going, oh, well done. You know, you gave it a crack. They're seeing you as a role model. They want your autograph. They want photos. They're introducing their kids to you. And those kids are then seeing people with disabilities as normal people.
21:33 Speaker 05 Historically, it's all about media attention and focus. That's what's driven change for the profile of the Paralympics.
21:41 Speaker 04 After years of training, nearly two weeks of competition against the world's best and a 25-hour flight, some of Australia's elite Paralympians returned from Barcelona weary but proud.
21:53 Speaker 21 I'm glad to be back, you know. I wouldn't mind staying on a bit longer, but no, it's good to come home.
22:00 Speaker 05 At my first Paralympics in Barcelona, I remember how significant it was that people back home could watch us compete.
22:08 Speaker 05 The coverage was still minimal, but we were there on the TV. Each night, we had a half-hour highlights package. Then, in 2000, Sydney put on a great show and started the ball rolling on making the Paralympics and our athletes equal to the Olympics. And we got a lot of media attention at home, but London in 2012 took the Paralympics to a whole new level.
22:32 Speaker 22 My god, I've seen that a heap and it still gives me tingles.
22:34 Speaker 05 Channel 4 in the UK created an ad campaign that's been given a lot of credit for this change.
22:40 Speaker 22 I didn't see any ad that good during the Olympics.
22:44 Speaker 05 This is the Gruen Show folk talking about it on ABC TV in the lead-up to the London Paralympics.
22:50 Speaker 23 Like, it's a build-up campaign and they're reminding us that the Paralympics is not the after-run. On that note, there's billboards all over London and they say, thanks for the warm-up.
23:02 Speaker 05 So Channel 4 made Paralympians and people with a disability in general be seen. And the more media, the more audience, so the more funding opportunities like sponsorship. Then, the more elite athletes can become. And round it goes. Here's Kate McGoughlin again from Paralympics Australia.
23:21 Speaker 20 I think it's shifted dramatically. Like, in the time I've been here in London, I could have counted our sponsors on one hand. And by the time we got to Rio and then obviously Tokyo, we shared a lot of common sponsors with the Olympic team, which has been a huge shift. And in some cases, we've got sponsors who are only sponsoring us this time around. And I think companies are increasingly seeing the value in the Paralympic team and the stories that our athletes... You know, tell and, you know, their backgrounds. Now we're seeing vast swathes of athletes who've got personal sponsors.
23:52 Speaker 13 Do you think that's directly tied to the increased support from broadcasters or the increased interest from broadcasters?
23:58 Speaker 20 Yeah, absolutely, I do, yeah. I think the success of the Australian Paralympic team's been amazing too. You know, we've, we do well, we punch above our weight as a small country.
24:07 Speaker 05 And historian Tony Nah says sponsorship for the top elite Paralympians is a much more appropriate way to fund athletes than public fundraising campaigns.
24:17 Speaker 03 There's also still a sense of, you could almost call it a charity, you know, a sort of sympathy for people with disabilities, which has no part in the Paralympics.
24:30 Speaker 05 There's still some tricky stuff around sponsorship.
24:33 Speaker 06 Sponsorship in the Paralympics, I find it a challenging space. It's way better than it was, but it could still be better.
24:40 Speaker 05 I've known Angie Ballard since she was about 14. I chaperoned her 18th birthday party. She's been such a powerhouse in track racing.
24:50 Speaker 06 There's a couple of things that come up is that the same people get sponsored. So you'll have like someone with six sponsors and making quite good money. And then you'll have other people like myself who have never had a sponsored chair in my life. So I've been racing since I was 12, so that's 30 years of buying all my own equipment and so on. And that can be really frustrating. I remember I won gold at the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games. So I won the race and I remember someone saying, there was someone else that won gold medal that night. And I remember the media person saying to me, you're going to be like untouchable after this. Like they'll just, everyone will want you, everyone like, untouchable was the wrong word there, but you know what I mean?
25:34 Speaker 06 Like, everyone will want you, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, look, I don't believe that, but we'll see what happens. And nothing. But even when I went into 2018 Gold Coast Games, defending gold medalist.
25:50 Speaker 06 Not a lot. So for me, I had a car accident when I was seven. So a spinal cord injury, so straight up paraplegic, pretty cut and dried, can't walk.
26:00 Speaker 05 Angie's competed at six Paralympic Games before Paris.
26:04 Speaker 06 Well, I first started some wheelchair sports, I think around nine or 10, but wheelchair racing was at 12. Got a chair off someone, like secondhand chair, it was like probably four inches too big for me and I was pushing with the arms way out, but I loved it. Like, it was so stupid. I remember my first push was at this 24 hour pushathon. And most people were pushing around in their day chairs, but someone offered to let me have a go in a race chair. And I'm, I don't know how long I pushed for, but I had blisters in the soreness neck and back and arms and I still wanted to do it. So, and that's what I look for when we have juniors or anyone starting wheelchair racing these days. They are impossible to steer, especially at the beginning. So you're looking for those ones that despite everything, they still want to keep doing it. And you're like, you're a little bit crazy and we like that.
26:49 Speaker 06 Standing starts, so from the start, starts, um, and now we're up to some flying ones. So the second one to get moving again, and that just means when we come back.
26:59 Speaker 05 I used to train with Angie and later I coached her. She was the skinny little kid who's gone on to so many bigger and better things. She's a world champion and she set world records.
27:11 Speaker 06 When I first had my accident, I, you know, I was just a seven year old kid. And then like somewhere along the way, I dislocated a hip and lost all the muscle tone on the left side of my body. I get spasms on the right side of my body, so that creates tone, even though I don't control that, it's still muscle contractions. And then I have rods, so that's metal from my neck to my hips, but it's not attached to my pelvis. So my spine has now started twisting round itself, separate from my pelvis. So that means when I sit in the chair, my knees are going one way, my hips are going another way and my shoulders are going another way. So it's like this weird little slinky scenario where we have to try and fix everything so that it's sort of straight.
27:55 Speaker 06 And sort of straight is the goal. It's, you will never be symmetrical and you accept that. But it's about like, how do we get the most efficiency and, and most power through the, the push?
28:13 Speaker 05 Angie Ballard's won medals in racing at several games. But as her body ages and changes with her disability, her capacity keeps changing. It's a real challenge.
28:23 Speaker 06 Sometimes our limits today aren't our limits tomorrow. I think that's a really important thing for almost anyone. But you often get in the able-bodied media just that, you know, push your limitations, blah, blah, blah. That's your job as an athlete is to try and find your limit. And there has to be some acceptance as well as some drive to, you know, Monday's session might not go that well, but you've got to front up again tomorrow and figure out what the next, how you can push yourself beyond that.
28:54 Speaker 05 I'm Louise Savage. The producer is Sarah Allerly. Supervising producer is Claudia Charantow. And the sound engineer is Russell Stapleton.
29:05 Speaker 24 You've been listening to the second part of The Paralympic Journey on ABC Rewind. Check out the first part on our Listen app. It doesn't matter what order you hear them in. And if you want a deeper, broader dive into the world of the Paralympics, including some great interviews with international players, check out Unbroken: The Paralympics and Its Record. It's a four-part documentary podcast hosted by Paralympian Annabelle Williams. Our producer Sarah Allerly made it for higher up when she collected these interviews. And the episodes can be found on the usual podcast apps.
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