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OPINION, INTERVIEWS & FEATURES
very therapeutic for me, making this diary, and then looking back at it. I never uploaded those videos. I still have them on my hard drive. Looking back, I can see that was sort of the start of the kind of work I do on my YouTube channel. OO : Through sheer dedication, in a year or two you reached one of the most elite levels of Paralympic fencing. Could you say something about what that requires, what that feels like? OL-W : I think people imagine that elite athletes, Olympians and so forth, are these amazing people who are really strong, and who love training every day. When they give interviews, you hear them say: oh, I’m so honoured to be here; it’s so, so good; I really enjoy everything. But it’s not always like that as an elite athlete. Sometimes we wake up, and we just don’t want to go to training. Sometimes we go to training and we can’t hit a single thing. Sometimes, leading up to the Games, I was sitting there thinking, why am I going to the Paralympics? I’m not good enough, even though I qualified. I think the thing about being an athlete is that you think, well, I’m going to do it anyway. I’m going to keep pushing, because I want it really badly. It’s about having the drive to achieve. I emailed Red Bull, Nike, Adidas and everyone at Marmite, telling them that I was going to Tokyo 2020 and asking them, do you want to back me? And every single one said no. But now I’m working with Nike: I did a shoe with them, I’m about to release my own range of T-shirt designs and I’m also working with them on accessible shoes.
would be nervous about defence on the Paralympic stage or the World Cup against really good people. It’s normal. OO : Can you talk about the level of support you received, especially from the UK Olympic Committee? OL-W : There are definitely differences between the Olympics and the Paralympics. They’re two different companies, essentially. So what the Olympians get is different from what the Paralympians get. There are definitely chicken and egg scenarios like, why don’t they show more Paralympic sports? Because people aren’t that interested in Paralympic sports? Why? Because they haven’t seen them on TV as much. So it’s very difficult. But I think since London 2012, we’ve changed a lot. Of course there are always going to be differences. And I do think people see it as the normal Olympics and the not-normal Olympics or the Special Olympics, or the Olympics and the disabled Olympics. It’s not any of those things. It’s a Paralympics: we’re our own thing.
OO : Could you talk a little about your views on the social model of disability?
OL-W : I guess it’s the idea that people are disabled more by society than they are by their diagnosis. It might take me a second longer to get in a car than you, or you can be on the phone while you walk, while I can’t. But that’s my normal: I don’t feel disabled by the fact I can’t do those things. What I do feel disabled by is society’s perceptions. I think there’s a lot of work to do in society about how we approach disabled people. And there are millions of types of disability, ranging from someone with diabetes to someone with one leg or someone in a wheelchair. I’m hoping that it will get its time in the spotlight, like many of the other movements have. Disability is definitely lagging behind a lot of the minority groups, especially recently with BLM, and the LGBTQ+ movement, which is paving the way, I think, for minority groups. I think disability is lagging behind purely because it’s, I’ll be honest, the least sexy. It’s the less marketable minority. We need society to stop seeing people as less because they’re disabled. People need to stop thinking, if there’s a disabled person with a nice car, that they’re scamming, or that they got the blue badge to skip parking tickets. Honestly, when you look at the way that disabled people are talked about, you should just imagine changing the word disabled for another minority group: it’d be recognised as being disgusting.
OO : I’d like to ask you about an issue that many athletes in the College face: performance anxiety and stress. I’d like to ask about your approach on it. You said that you had moments of self-doubt in major tournaments. How do you deal with this?
OL-W : I think the biggest problem is when someone tells themself, oh, I’m nervous, I shouldn’t feel nervous. They try to tell themselves not to feel a certain way when in fact, whenever I feel nervous, I think, yeah, anyone in my position
OO : Are you looking forward to Paris 2024?
OL-W : Yeah, I’m looking forward to it, but you can never count on these things until the day you actually qualify. All I know is that if I don’t qualify, it won’t be because I didn’t try hard enough!
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