From a spark to a roaring fire

I’m writing this blog on a train travelling between Venice and Munich.  We’re just arriving into Innsbruck.  The weather in Venice this morning was gorgeous.  Beautiful sunshine and about 20 degrees.  As we have been travelling north the sky has darkened and mysterious clouds of snow are hanging over the valleys like white fairy floss.  Snow has fallen and flurries are still whirling in the air.  

Seventeen years ago I holidayed at Lake Como and then headed up to the Austrian countryside.  It had been 30 plus degrees in Como and I had mostly summer clothes with me.  We relocated to Austria after a couple of weeks and as we drove up and over the Alps the weather certainly cooled but there wasn’t a huge amount of snow.  We arrived at our hotel on a beautiful cool spring evening.  I needed a jacket but nothing more.  The next day, we woke up to discover that snow had fallen overnight and was still snowing.  This wasn’t just jacket weather, full ski attire was needed!  I talked to one of the hotel staff about the sudden and dramatic meteorological change.  She laughed and told me the locals never get their summer clothes out until second winter has passed.  Apparently we had arrived just in time for “second winter”!

I’ve thought about that experience a few times over the prevailing years and it just came back to me now as I sit on the train approaching Innsbruck.  I’ve been in Europe since the end of February and I don’t return to Australia until the very end of May.  It’s an odd time to visit Europe - unless of course, you have tickets to the Winter Paralympics in Italy.

The last ten days have been extraordinary.  I am gathering all sorts of information and will eventually write a travel blog about accessible travel in Europe, but for now I really want to talk about the Paralympics.  I have to start by saying I am in no way a sports fan, and apart from listening to cricket on the radio as I’m driving around through a Sydney summer, I never watch or listen to any sports.  I can’t even be bothered to engage in the Olympics to be honest.  

In 2000 though, Sydney was host to the Olympic Games.  It seemed ridiculous to be in Sydney and not go to one event at the very least, so some friends and I got tickets for a couple of the gymnastics events which were, admittedly impressive.  It was after the Olympics though that made a difference to me.  Tickets to the Paralympics were as cheap as chips, so a couple of friends and I decided to see some of the Paralympic events.  Oh. My. Goodness. Me!  What an experience!  These were serious athletes with a difference.  Watching Louise Sauvage win Gold in the 5000m wheelchair racing and Kurt Furnley winning Silver in the 800m wheelchair racing was extraordinary.  What was also extraordinary was that the stadium was almost empty.  How on earth could there be so much hoopla about the Olympics when these amazing para-athletes were competing just as hard with zero hoopla, virtually no media interest, a fraction of spectators and a serious lack of funding.  

Fast forward 26 years, what a difference.  I was in the UK when the 2024 Paris Summer Paralympics were on.  I could have easily jumped on a train across the channel but by then I was too fatigued.  I vowed that I would get to the next Paralympic Games - the 2026 winter games in Italy.  So that is how I’m now on a train travelling between Venice and Munich.  In the last 10 days, I’ve seen two para-ice hockey matches in Milan, the Final of the Mixed Wheelchair Curling, the Finals the Men’s Alpine Skiing and the Closing Ceremony.  I can testify that the Para Ice Hockey players are next level insane. Just find a match on YouTube and I defy you not to spend the next 45 minutes with your mouth hanging open.  Wheelchair Curling is like a mix of Snooker and Bowls on ice and excruciatingly stressful at the end of each play and particularly in the last few minutes of the final end.  As for the Alpine Skiing, what can I say?  When I was a kid, in the winter there used to be this program on the BBC called Ski Sunday.  I used to watch it.  I thought the Visual Impaired Skiing was the cleverest sport I’d ever seen.  Blind Skiers flying down a mountain with a Guide yelling at them to tell them which way to go and what to avoid.  As far as I was concerned as a twelve year old, it was only slightly less impressive than if visually impaired people were driving cars!

Fighting the crowds in Italy with a wheelchair could have been somewhat stressful but at the Paralympics, you’re treated like royalty and the crowds parted like the Red Sea in the Bible story for every person in a wheelchair.  We arrived early for the Closing Ceremony only to find that our seats were behind a gigantic screen.  The volunteer helping us to our seats told us to hang on, it was entirely inappropriate and if we gave her five minutes she would fix it.  Fix it she and her colleagues did - we ended up sitting between the Argentinian and Chinese teams, along with the Italian team in front, some of the Austrian team and lots of people in very fancy uniforms and hats standing behind us!  We were directly behind the stage and the flag poles.  

There was something different about the crowds at the Paralympics.  It didn’t matter who was competing, the crowds yelled and shouted and waved flags for every single competitor and team.  My first experience was the Canada v Japan men’s para ice-hockey match which Canada won 14-0.  Canada (who eventually took out the Silver medal) dominated the game.  There was a huge Canadian contingent at the games in general, but particularly at the ice-hockey.  As it became apparent that this was a David and Goliath moment, ever person in the arena, including the Canadian spectators, started screaming encouragement at the Japanese team.  Every single person in the arena was desperate for them to win at least one goal.  Alas it wasn’t to be.

I can’t say it was the same at the Curling because everyone had to be quiet. It was a neck and neck game between Canada and China which Canada eventually won with one point.  Clearly the Canadians were delighted they had won Gold but there was a huge amount of respect and encouragement for the Chinese team.  On to the Para Alpine Skiing.  The commentator reminded the crowd at various moments that the Paralympic spirit is to cheer for everyone, whatever nation individuals supported.  He needn’t have bothered, the crowd was already on it.  When the visually impaired skiers came down the mountain, the crowd fell silent, ensuring they could hear their guides loud and clear.

What is it though that makes the Paralympics different?  Each athlete trains exhaustively.  Each athlete is just as competitive and skilled as their able-bodied counterpart.  Maybe it’s simply because the Paralympians have had to fight harder for it.  Over the years they’ve had to fight apathy and pity about people with disabilities.  They’ve had to fight for everyday aids, equipment and support just to live an average life.  They’ve had to fight for the recognition, they’ve had to fight for the funding, they’ve had to fight for sponsors.  They’ve just had to fight.  It drives me bonkers when I hear sports commentators describe sportsmen and women as “heroes”.  No they’re not, they just had a bit of talent, had a bit of support, had a bit of luck and did a massive amount of training and competing.  Paralympians aren’t heroes either.  At least not because they’re athletes.

I looked into the history of the Paralympics which developed gradually following the Second World War.  Sports clubs were developed for wounded war veterans as a form of what would now be called Occupational or Diversional Therapy.  In 1944, the British Government requested Dr Ludwig Guttman to open a spinal injury centre which was later named the Stoke Mandeville Hospital; a world renowned rehabilitation centre for people with spinal injuries.  As part of the hospital’s treatment process, rehabilitation sports were developed, they then evolved into recreational support and eventually to competitive sport.  On the 29th July 1948, the London Olympic Games opened.  What most people don’t know, was that was the day the Paralympics was born.  Dr Guttman organised the first competition for wheelchair athletes which he named the Stoke Mandeville Games.  Sixteen male and female injured service personnel took part - in wheelchair archery.  In 1952, The Netherlands joined in and the International Stoke Mandeville Games were founded.  In 1960 the world’s first actual Paralympic Games was held in Rome.  Four hundred athletes from 23 countries participated.  In September 1989, the International Paralympic Committee was formed.  In 2024, 4,400 athletes, from over 170 countries participated in the Paris Summer Paralympics.  The Winter Paralympics is always smaller and has less events than the summer games but this year 611 athletes from 55 countries participated, breaking the records for athlete numbers.

So why am I writing an article about the Paralympics, apart from the fact that I’ve just been there.  The over-riding word that has been floating through my brain is Resilience.  The Paralympics are the embodiment of resilience.  Of determination.  Of grit. Not because the athletes have trained exhaustively but because every step of the way they’ve had to fight and they didn’t start from zero like their able bodied counterparts.  They started from minus zero.  Thinking about those first games at Stoke Mandeville,  the athletes had been just living their lives when something terrible and life-changing happened to them.  They could have fallen into a pit of despair, maybe they did.  Quite frankly, who could blame them if they had?  Like Austria, they might have experienced their second winter, but spring always follows winter and after spring, summer appears.  

Australian wheelchair athlete Dylan Alcott became a paraplegic as an infant and nobody could say that has held him back.  The man is a living legend in wheelchair sports.  Initially he played wheelchair tennis and was astoundingly successful.  He then transitioned to wheelchair basketball prior to returning to wheelchair tennis.  What prompted the transition back to wheelchair tennis was an incident in the lead up to the 2012 Paralympics involving an inebriated person lifting Alcott out of his chair and dropping him.  Alcott required extensive hand surgery and his competition level basketball playing days were over.  Rather than give up, he switched back to tennis, but this time in the quad category.  I have never heard Alcott complain, whinge or express a desire to seek revenge on the person involved.  What I have seen him do is become Australian of the Year and advocate passionately for people with disabilities alongside his stunning tennis playing.  The man is a living embodiment of the word resilience.

Resilience isn’t something we either have or haven’t got.  Resilience is developed in our quiet, hard places and resilience is developed because someone got in our corner and helped us.  Those original 16 archery athletes in the Stoke Mandeville Games didn’t come up with the idea themselves, their doctor did.  Their doctor thought outside the box and saw them not as body parts that needed fixing but as whole people who had undergone significant trauma.  Those initial athletes put in the work but the people around them created the opportunity.

The athletes I watched over the last ten days put in the work.  I have no doubt that there were points in their lives where they felt like quitting.  Where the pressure and nature of their injuries or medical conditions were overwhelming.  Nevertheless someone whispered words of encouragement to them.  Someone fought for them.  Someone paved the way and showed them it was possible.

In the final speech of the Closing Ceremony the whole point of the Paralympic Movement was revealed as Andrew Parsons, President of the International Paralympics Committee spoke directly to the athletes.  

“Yet, perhaps the greatest legacy of these Games is the shift in perception created by Paralympians.  When the world watched a skier launch down a mountain, or a Para ice hockey team battle on the ice, something changed.  Old stereotypes faded.  New possibilities appeared.  Children with disabilities saw role models who look like them in fierce competition at the highest level of sport.  Families, teachers, and communities now see ability where once they saw only disability.  This is the true legacy of the Paralympic Movement.”

That spark is what lights the flame of resilience within someone who is fighting for everything.  Every single athlete that participated in these Games had a little tiny spark lit within them too. What we all have to do is ensure we fan our own sparks into a roaring fire rather than snuff them out.  And then we can fan the flames of someone in our own worlds who is fighting to keep their own spark alive.  You never know, that child in your child’s pre-school with a congenital abnormality, or that young person who has survived a car crash but endured a life altering injury or maybe even you, might appear at future Paralympic Games and experience the roar of a stadium screaming their names.  

As always please share this post.  You never know who might need to read it and you might just be fanning a spark that is struggling to grow into a roaring fire.

Angharad