Not all differently-abled people are superhuman

James Moore, The Independent

We’re going to be hearing a lot about “the super humans” going into a Paralympic year because TV companies will briefly wake up to the fact that there are differently-abled people in Britain and some of them are quite good at sport. Lots of those of us who aren’t “superhumans” but live ordinary lives with disabilities get kind of tired of this kind of thing.

It’s not the sport — which can be hugely entertaining to watch — or the stars themselves, who can be very engaging.

But it is partly the inspiration that goes with it, which leads to the perception that if you’re pushing a wheelchair up a hill you must be the next gold medal winning superstar. And it’s partly that the sport itself rather palls when you’re decidedly un-super yourself and can’t find anywhere to play at a less rarefied level.

So it was refreshing to see the comments of a genuine gold medal-winning Paralympic track superstar, who appears to recognise the problem. Hannah Cockroft is a world-class wheelchair racer. Speaking to law firm Irwin Mitchell’s new podcast, Let’s Talk About It, which discusses what it’s really like to live with a disability, she said: “I’ve met so many disabled people since London 2012 who have said, ‘I want to get involved with sport, but when I’m pushing down the street, everyone asks, why are you not on the track against Dave Weir or Jonnie Peacock or whoever?’ Suddenly we got labelled the ‘superhumans’, during London — but it wasn’t just the Paralympians who got labelled, it was disabled people in general.”

Sport England would classify me as “active” because I push myself around the park whenever the weather allows, and I engage in activity of “at least moderate intensity” for more than 150 minutes a week. One of the downsides of this is having to listen to people saying, “Ooh you’ll be going to Tokyo next!” when I’ve picked up a bit of speed. It’s almost as irritating as those who go the other way and decide they need to come up behind me and push when I’m tackling a hill perfectly well by myself.

Would you say, “Ooh you’ll be at the Olympics next” to a middle-aged journalist out jogging? Of course you wouldn’t, any more than you’d offer to carry them up a hill.

As Cockroft says, not everyone wants to be a superhuman. But there are plenty of us who like to keep active, and would welcome the chance to compete with others of a like mind.

There’s been an improvement in activity levels, according to Sport England. The latest figures, which came out this week, show some 46 per cent of those with a disability or long-term health conditions were “active” in the year to May 2019. Those bearing the label “inactive” (less than 30 minutes of moderate activity in a week) fell to 41 per cent. But compare that to the able bodied and you see that what I’d call the “activity gap” remains huge. Just 24.8 per cent of the population as a whole were “inactive”, down from 25.2 per cent while 63.2 per cent were active, up from 62.3 per cent.

How to deal with that? Cockroft urges action to help young people. She found herself excluded from school PE lessons, so the point is well made. That needs to end. But nor should adults be forgotten. The lack of opportunities for both needs to be addressed.

Clubs can be hard to find, even in urban areas. Those that exist aren’t always welcoming. One thing I noticed during an unhappy career in wheelchair basketball is that some “superhumans” have a troubling tendency to push out mere humans when they’re no longer capable of competing at the top level. Sports clubs, when you can even find them, often meet at inconvenient times – especially for those of us who work. Part of the reason for that is sports venues’ reluctance to provide space and time for para-sport at more popular hours of the day. In other words, not just at 7am on a Sunday morning or in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon.

“Our biggest problem is badminton,” I was told by one wheelchair basketball organiser. They weren’t criticising that sport so much as they were illustrating the point that sports halls are fond of putting it on because, presumably, they do well out of it, and markedly reluctant to offer the same concessions to disability sport. To really narrow that activity gap, and sustainably, we need more opportunities to engage in sport and exercise. I could make a case for mandating sports centres, at least publicly funded ones, to set aside space for disability sport. After all, differently-abled people pay their council tax too. But that would require legislation, which could be controversial, and also a humane government to enact it (so not the foul excuse for one we have at the moment courtesy of Boris Johnson).