Equal Too: The Change We Made

each other, but just gotta brea talk. We don't take the doss. Brown takes the sales off in the unted stays. I remember going into the Paralympic Athletics Day one morning session. I'm walking out and just go this is amazing, And there it is the coach jumpstairs feet. Their celebrations are just incredible, as incredible as that performance. The nineteen year

old France nis in Italy. Just doesn't know what to do with ourselves h M. The Writing Phoenix project began when the documentary Rising Phoenix was released on Netflix in August of This was the date the Paralympics were originally due to start. The documentary tells the history of the Paralympic Games, which has grown to become one of the world's largest sporting events. Do you use don't you believe? We'll try to gain the outside is done it again.

We are nice quite quite news tonight. It was one of the most popular films released on Netflix in its opening weekend, and it triggered an incredible discussion about disability all around the world. Paralympic sport is a catalyst for change. It challenges how we perceive disabled people and provide a global stage to build a community. But what happens after the games when athletes return home to truly create an accessible and equitable world, a place where everyone feels safe

and is encouraged to be themselves. We have work to do. We have to change the law, transformed culture, rebuild our cities, increased visibility, and to do so, we must empower everyone to be involved. Over the next five episodes, you're going to hear from activists and policy makers, athletes and allies from around the world as we listen to what they think of where this movement and where the story of this movement needs to go next. I'm Sophie Morgan. This

is equal to episode one, the change we made. If you want to follow the equal two story and join the conversation hashtag equal to, go to our website ht Whitey dot world, where you will also find the transcript and video versions of the podcast, along with subtitles and a b Sell signed version in the coming days. The Paralympics is a phenomenal sporting event. It has the power

to change lives. As a wheelchair user myself, for example, the twelve Games in London opened the door to me becoming one of the first female disabled television hosts in the world. The games showcase disabled athletes at an elite level and allows spectators to see what disabled sports people can achieve. Eve But the rise of the Paralympic Games

has not been straightforward. Some games have been incredible, so finally the sun was setting on London's glorious summer of sport that they were going to go out with a bang. We have already espoished by the triumphs and drama the Paralympics. Some not so good Riaralympic Games are getting underway for many of the athletes involved, though the road tario has involved more than just hard work and determination. Questions have again been raised over whether the host city is ready.

It's an extraordinary story with many twists and turns, and it all began with a vision from one man, the founder of the Games, Sir Ludwig Gutman. He's the doctor who has forced paralyzed people to walk, laugh, argue, earn wagers, run up debts. So how did the Games evolved from Gutman's artery competition to the event we now know? Dame Tanny A. Thompson is one of the most celebrated Paralympians

and politicians in the UK. I asked her to give me a quick overview of the progression of the Paralympics. Arm and Bright Thompson of Bright Brittany, the running parall A brit when world read World Harder, there's going to really have red three years in a row or pretty Paralympics in a lively tossed Arnod stride Segon so in uh the first Games in Rome in n six kind of sat alongside the Olympics, and then there were games that then happened in the same country but not in

the same city. H and then you know what should have been the Games in Moscow? The governments that they didn't have any disabled people, So the Paralympics went to Arnam and then it was kind of quite interesting. So four the game split, so the wheelchair users went to Stoke, Mandible and everything else went to New York because l A that was meant to host the Paralympics then decided not to so a t A which you know, I don't think, you know, I was sort of right on

the edges of the politics support. Then it was a massive step forward because even in Korea, you know, there's a lot of discrimination against disabled people indoor thought you're the only done kind of doubt. So my first games were sold and it was interesting. I mean, it was the first time that we'd had a Paralympics that sat alongside the Olympics. We had the same kit, although not the same amount of kit, and the Olympians um and it felt like it was a massive step forward and

a real turning point, which it was quite exciting. Yeah, Barcelona Games took the baton from Seoul and they created a dramatic shift in how the games were produced and how they were communicated. Many say the beginnings of the modern Paralympic Games were born in Barcelona. It felt like it was just massive step forward in terms of the games and where it was going to sit alongside the Olympics.

We have really big crowds um at the Paralympics, and I think one of the sad things is people sort of forget Barcelona and what a sort of a watershed moment it was, because then Atlanta, Sydnely, Athens beyond, you know, there weren't massive crowds. But actually for Barcelona there was a really really good atmosphere in the city, uh and around Olympic Park, you know, swimming pools packed, the athletics was really full evening sessions UM and that that was

quite exciting sort of step forward again. Those crowds helped propelled Tanny to a massive five metal performance that summer in Spain. But long before Tanny had touched down in Barcelona, countless hours of planning and preparation had gone into in shuring that the event would be ready for the world stage. The International Paralympic Committee or i p C, has been in charge of ensuring the successful delivery and organization of

the Paralympic Games since it was founded in nine. Zavie Gonzalez of Spain was CEO at the i p C from two thousand and four until he retired in two thousand and nineteen. He was a pivotal figure in the Barcelona Games. Zavy tells me about what happened when I was called to see if I was interested in enjoined the Paralympic Games. My reaction was, Bara, what one think that we did in Barcelona? I think that's what really

was there. The foundation of the success is that we from the beginning created the alleleads and treated the event as as an event, and we didn't really looking through so much the disability. We needed to organize a very good event, needed to be similar to the Olympics as much as we could, and we knew that the Allies were going to come. The Allies will will require that level of sophistication and preparations. Gordi Eta. If they will see Baiqual and shall pat with the should see Plin

Shendicho joined the cartoon one. Then the Games went to China for the first time, and the Beijing Games in two thousand and eight was yet another milestone for the event, impacting the lives of China's eighty three million disabled people for the better before the Games, the country was comparatively inaccessible, but as Zavvy remembers, that soon changed. I think what the real change happened or become visible. That's probably more more fair to say it became visible was one the

President of China. I think it was called hug Intao at the time, the declare that the Olympics and the Paralympics are going to be games of equalis splendor. And this time the games even managed to change the law. Just weeks before the Paralympics began in Beijing, the revised Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of People with the Disability came into force to protect

the rights of disabled people. The law meant that the state and society had to improve accessible facilities and promote accessible information. History was made. I guess that, in a nutshell is the power of sport, the power of the Paralympic Games, not just to move us, but to change us. The movement was growing, and then in the Games arrived in London. Yeah, I remember going into the Paralympic Athletics day one morning session. I'm walking out and just going

this is amazing. Investment in the Games was key to their success. But this investment wasn't just to improve infrastructure and access, but to amplify and ignite conversations too. For the London Twelve Games, one stakeholder who rose to the challenge was the UK's most progressive and some might say disruptive broadcaster, Channel Four. For any of us, I think that we're lucky enough to be involved in London and

just to be involved with the Paralympic movement. It's been that's the best thing that's happened in our working lives. Yes I can, suddenly, yes I can, Gee, I'm afraid to go on has turned into yes I can. Take That was Dan Brook, who was the chief marketing and Communications officer of Channel four at the time of the Twelve Games. TV coverage of the Paralympics had always been done by the world renowned BBC, who also broadcast the Olympics.

But spotting an opportunity to give the Paralympics its own stage and to center the narratives of athletes themselves, Channel four won the television rights to broadcast for the Paralympics. That was an incredibly brave decision because saying no to the BBC is like saying no to the Queen. Channel four sought to do something that nobody had ever achieved before in the history of the Paralympics, to present it to the world on a stage as big as and

equal to the Olympics. That was exactly what founder Ludwig Gutman had always wanted, which is why he named the games the para Olympics, which means parallel or equal to. Channel four were finally going to realize Gutman's dream. Dan and his team came up with a revolutionary idea. We were talking and saying to ourselves that the portrayal of

people disabilities in popular culture. The biggest thing that we could think of where disability was portrayed in a positive way was the X men um you know, and probably should be called the X Men and the X Women. Their disability is at the center of what their superpower is. That was the basis for for Superhumans. Then on top of that, we wanted to give Paralympians the Hollywood treatment, the Nike treatment in a way that we felt they'd

never been given before. So, you know, in the Superhumans advert there's amazing production values, and you know, we spent a lot of money making sure that athletes looked amazing should be on that plane. If you're a Paralympian, your your disability is an integral part of your identity and indeed of your presence at the Games. So we didn't want to shy away from that in a way that you know, we felt perhaps before people had m So you know, stumps and scars and other aspects of disability

are presented very proudly in the advert. You know, there's this handover period of two and a half weeks between the Olympics ending and the Paralympics beginning, and that was where marketing got crammed, and we decided, no, we want to get this on people's agenda, on their radar, right from the start, before the Olympics even begin. So when the Olympics ends, there's not people already prepared for the fact that there's a second party that's about to occur.

And that was that was really successful. The other thing that we did, which which I loved, were when as the Olympics were ended ending, all these massive billboards went up all over the country with the Paralympics logo on it and the Channel four logo on it, and it simply said thanks for the warm up. Channel four broke the mold and turned the Games into an event that was watched and loved by millions of people. British athletes like Johnny Peacock, Ellie Simmons and David Weir became household

names across the UK began is she going to do it? Then? And the twelve Paralympics was also successful in shifting short term perceptions on disability, withough the half of people asked stating that their view of disability had changed for the better. Dan says that one of the really important components of the success was the backing of the games by commercial sponsors, including one of the UK's largest supermarkets, Sainsbury's. Change occurs

in two different ways. There's a change that occurs to the games and the way that the Games is held and put on then by successive cities because you know, everyone's this is sport, everyone's competitive, right, you want to put on the games that was better than the ones before, So you know, London has now become the new benchmark for for the Paralympics. And what it definitely did was it it put the subject of disability sort of front and center in society in a way that that that

that it had never that had never happened before. I remember lieving the stadium one night in London and there was a a mom with her daughter, quite young daughter with double emputy, and she was walking very slowly out of the park and the man was just pootling along alongside, and you could see the mom just wanted to pick her up and stick her in her wheelchair and push her, and the mom wasn't doing that. And I talked to everyone, so I stopped and said, have you had a nice time?

And a mom was just like yeah, And I said, what happened to? We've been here every day, We've watched like loads of stuff and said the start of the game, said my daughter covered her legs. She did, and she preferred to be in a pram as opposed to a wheelchair because she knew as a wheel chat, although she knew she'd get treated differently being sort of a young child in a pram, she felt she was treated worse

if she was in a wheelchair. And she'd watch loads of stuff, and she'd watch Johnny Peacock and she was now walking in a pair of shorts and showing off her legs and I was like, right. So I said to this this young girl, I said, so, you know, what do you think of Johnny? And she liked to know and I said, sid, you want to be like Johnny Peacock when you grew up? And she looked at me as kind of only a seven eight year old card and went, well, that's stupid, because Johnny's a boy

and I'm a girl. Okay. So it's clear that the London Games made the UK and perhaps even the world sit up and take note. So what next. By the time the Rio Games came around, even TV stars were keen to get involved. Here's R. J. Mitty of the

US hit drama Breaking Bad. I really wanted to get involved because you know, um, the the Olympics and the Paralympics to me are such a pivotal part of our society when it comes to what we can do, the mentality of the human condition, of how far we can push ourselves and um, and I was trying to get involved with them. And in the in the US we weren't really I wasn't really making making the cut and uh. And in the United Kingdom forwards more than happy to

to pick me up. But what many people don't know is that the Paralympic Games were very nearly canceled and it's only thanks to the determination and the resilience of the Paralympic movement that they happened. They actually had the furthest reach of any games in history. More than four billion people watched from over a hundred and fifty countries. Ladies and gentlemen the Paralympic flag handle and ceremonial saying mardis is his loradies A ceremonial Paralympica. What a roller

coaster these past few years have been. But here we are, through all of the delays and hardships of a pandemic. The sixteenth Paralympic Games are underway. So what can we expect from the games this summer? I knew just the

person to ask, Juan Pablos Alaza. For fourteen years, Juan Pablo, who is the President of the National Disability Council in Colombia as well as president of the Inter American Committee for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities, has been a global and passionate activist for

the Paralympic movement and for rights of persons with disabilities. Well, the Tokyo Games at an unusual games because well, of course we were dealing with this meteorite that kill Earth called COVID. That right now, it's it's more like that's our vival mode. We we need the games to happen for our for our system, and mostly because of our athletes. And I think it's also like such of hope for for the world. You know, we are a little bit of that light at the end of the tunnel. Die

Tammaso is a legend in Japan. He represented Japan in the Sydney, Athens and Beijing Olympics, and since retiring, has taken a particular interest in athlete development and has a passion for the Paralympic movement. I asked him about Japan's intended legacy for the Paralympic Games. The most fundamental impact on Japanese society, in my opinion, is about labeling. In Japan, we offer support to people with disabilities, but conversely that

results in people with disabilities being grouped together. People with disabilities are on one side and healthy people on the other, clearly separating them into different groups. In the same way, if we raised the question of labeling and the Paralympic Games were not merely talking about people with disabilities, but also those people who are not Paralympians. I believe that the biggest legacy of the Paralympics is to free us from the stigma of those labels like being Japanese or

male or female. Since we tend to confine ourselves into certain frames, the Paralympics invites us to question the power or importance of labels and categorization. Are they signposts for community pride and self identification or are they used to other and distance those who have always been on the margins.

Language is personal and shaped by who we are and how we live, which is why this global lens on disability and inclusion has never been more important, and, according to Juan Pablo, Tokyo is taking up the charge to forge a lasting impact that reaches far beyond their borders. Never before in the history of the Paralympic movement had

inclusion been explicitly in the in the strategic plan. So they started with um with this administration three years ago, where we designed the like the first like the first drawing of the first blueprint of inclusion being spoken about explicity in explicitly in our in our our work. So yes, it's fascinating times. We are indeed pioneering this with all the additional challenges that that means, because you know this

is unchartered territories. I think that if in London we matured us an elite uh competition of mass consumption and in real we kind of consolidated that in in Tokyo we are launching now that we know that we're a big movement. Yeah, and now that we have that very much well consolidated, we can start to focus on our broader purpose. So of course we will always be about sports and that's not going to change ever, but sports for the service of inclusion of people with these abilities.

Now that we're like adults and grownups, we can say, okay, we can use this massive platform and this uh so wide and global reach to actually get some in s done through the weed the fifteen campaign that it's a ten year initiative to see how we can link we can find that philosopher. So we're talking about before linking, how para sports positively and truly and measurably and objectively impact the implementation of the inn Convention of rights of

people with disabilities. Bringing you through this timeline of the Paralympics, albeit quickly, is important because with a shared understanding of how far we've come, we can start to map out what's next. It's time for us to stop looking back and to start looking forward. It's time for us to think about what is next. In Episode two, will be exploring the law, the limitations and opportunities of the policies we work and live within, and how paralympians, advocates, activists

and allies are creating the change that we need. This podcast has been made by disabled and non disabled people, and this story is for everyone. Join us. These podcasts have been made possible by the supporter Procter and Gamble. P and G share our ambition to create a more equal world, a world where everyone can have equal access and the opportunity to thrive. We are very grateful for

the partnership in making these conversations a reality. Of people with the direct involvement in the production of this podcast, including guests, identify as disabled. This podcast was created by Greg Nugent, co founder of Harder Than You Think. I'm Sophia Morgan, your host and executive producer. Fellow executive producers are Chanaid Burke, Greg Nugent, Barnaby Spurrier, Laura I'ms, Mark Pritchard,

and Kimberly Dobrunner. Thank you to the I p C and Channel four for their support and use of archive material. Thanks to our podcast production Partner Media, and also to Seneca Women for their assistance with distributing this show. If you want to follow the equal to story and join the conversation hashtag equal to, go to our website ht Whitey dot world, where you will also find the transcript and video versions of the podcast, along with subtitles and a BSL signed version in the coming days.