'Preparing for the Paralympics' - Hosted by 4 time Gold Medal winner Dylan Alcott

hello sports fans and welcome to listen able the warm-up games deal their over it's time for the Paralympics baby that's right what are you a how many time Champion uh four gold two silver but you know silver what you you got a silver in I got a gold in 2008 in whech basketball yeah silver in whech basketball y two gold in Rio singles and doubles tennis gold and a silver in Tokyo love the paralic game so much it means so much to me when I was 17 I got to go with the rollers and we won Gold and it was lifechanging but paralympic sport in general saved my life it did and um honestly it it it was the best thing that ever happened to me and I owe it so much and I just took a moment out there to look around because I just I just I just I'm so thankful and grateful that it came into my life and that I can perform on the big stage and do with my friends and and change perceptions along the way of what people think about us people with disabilities and not just as athletes you know hopefully this is changing perceptions beyond that not every person with a disability can be a paralympian but they can be a doctor a lawyer a mom a dad a teacher an educator a politician whatever it is but they don't often get the opportunities that we've got here to play sport and that's what we're trying to do and um I wear that it's that it means that much to me like it's huge and to get it done today was bloody awesome oh what was the Silver doubles yeah man Heath lost to the Dy we'll get on to Heath Davidson he will feature on next week's episode that's right it's a two-part paralympic special um chatting to some of the current athletes that are going to be competing in Paris and uh chatting to some athletes who we've spoken to on listen able um about their experience at the games and we clearly recorded this opening before because I'm their host in the Paralympics very cool so um yeah you're right we're doing this a couple of months before you leave cuz I'm also hosting the Olympics so I'm away for nine weeks nine weeks in Paris seems like a dream it's it's pretty tough man tough don't need a you know assistant I care yeah oh yeah only if you B does mean I get paid you bathe me I'd love to I do that for free yeah true milk we do that on Tuesdays and what is your responsibility for the games so I am if you're listening in Australia I'm actually one of the main hosts of the Olympics and Par Olympics awesome so obviously pretty cool to be personal disability hosting the Olympics never been to the Olympics but that's just so I can get ready to then host the par Olympics um Ellie Cole and James brace here hosting the prime time um with a bit of help from Kur Fern over there and then myself and syia Je Sylvia Jeff are doing like 10 to three but we're in we're in Paris so I'm the only host in Paris the rest of back here um going to be unbelievable and yeah yeah I can't wait to be on the other side of the fence brother you know what I mean cool and that opportunity with the Olympics um as well is a really great time slot have you like to talk about that yeah when this comes out it's already happened um it's already happened already happed you had a great time slot um so I'm doing 3 till 7:00 p.m. into the news on the Olympics every day which is 7 to 11:00 a.m. in Paris and I got all day off to go watch the Dream Team here's some stats about last uh Olympics paralympic picks um which was also a weird one cuz it was obviously during Co times it was push back a years yeah I've got a good St that I'm going to add in there as well great um 68% of all Australians watch some of the Tokyo Paralympics yeah great and it was beneficial for my life our lives and the movement I wish everyone wasn't in lockdown it sucked but it did have a very very small win that people got around the par Olympics potentially for the first time cuz they were home and we could feel the tangible energy of how many people were watching it was like nothing well I think at one point I had half the country watching me play tennis like that's that's crazy it was Ross yeah um 82% said the par Olympics change negative perceptions of people with the disability it goes beyond sport we love hearing that yeah absolutely so this episode we're going to be focusing on four of our athletes three of them have now retired one of them is going to be competing at the Paris games um like we said we're sort of it's hard to imagine that we're fast forward into August for this episode um when we recording it now in June but Jared Clifford what do you remember about our interview with Jared Clifford oh he's a great man he's a fellow Nike Ambassador and I love what he does on the track and the road running as a person with low vision however I love what he says more he's actually like a gun advocate believes in in the Journey of what the Paralympics is about um I don't I hope not speaking that ter but I don't think he ran his best in Tokyo so I I think it's a bit of redemption so I really hope he can get out there and give it a good crack and just do the best that he can um here is the running superstar that as Jared Clifford starts his competition dates in just a few days on the 30th of August I'm a distance Runner that's my sport I uh am competing uh in five, 1500 meters 5,000 meters and Marathon uh I'm visually impaired I was diagnosed with juvenile imaculate degeneration when I was uh three years old um deteriorated during primary school uh so I'm what they say is legally blind but uh that's basically just yeah a severe visual impairment for visually impaired athletes there's T1 12 and 13 t11 is for totally blind uh and then 12 and 13 are for visually impaired I'm a I'm a T12 athlete I'm in the middle I have the choice to run with guides but then for distance running because we don't have Lanes uh 12 and 13 is combined so it actually will come up as t13 try to combines both of the classifications so yeah so you competed in a body world championships for the under 20s yeah 2018 yeah so are you have you got a guide for that then or are you running free for that for that yeah so that's the thing so, 1500 meters which is what I competed then I've never used a guide um because on the track navigationally I'm not too bad like I'm I can do it uh it's more when I use a guide on the track which I have done in the past for 5,000 m it's to give me like the information I can't see so what position I'm coming how many laps to go it's hard to count to 12 when you cooked um like you know which which athletes in front like if it's the canyon out in front like it's worth reacting to if it's someone I'm not so nervous about I might just let him run out in front a bit so that stuff it's more for information uh but then yeah off the track uh and then in on some tracks at night um guides are not just there for that information but there for the navigational um kind of aspect and I'm going to play dumb because obviously I know but how does a guide work talk us through the rules how you guys are connected like what who who it is like what's the vibe there yeah so uh they've actually brought in new rules recently uh where the tether length which is what uh we I hold and the guide holds has to be 30 CMS but most of that is taken up by the loops that we hold so we're pretty much connected by our hands um we get a little bit longer for like a marathon it's 50 cmet which is good but we have to run in sync uh my guides uh throughout my career Tim Logan who's my best mate uh I've run with him for almost a decade now uh he's one of them philos Saunders my coach he was a guide with me in Dubai uh but we've actually recently had to make the decision that for the 5K I'm going to have to try and wing it and run like it's solo just because my guides are too slow it's too slow say it say the words I can't say that say it it's too slow oh they goty yeah maybe ridiculous um because I you've run with two guides before but is that that's for marathons right so they have fresh legs and for and for 5K at World Champs I did use two guides and the 1500 met we're only allowed to have one and that's one of the reasons why I've never been able to go there because I'd need you know Stewie mlan or your OE horey Edwards the Olympic guys like that that's kind of the pace I would need but then that doesn't guarantee you're going to be good at guiding because a guide one you have to trust them with your life and I'm literally Crossing highways with Timmy um but two you know this is the paric games is something I've worked towards for my entire life and I'm trusting them to give me the right information so that I can make the right decisions to achieve a lifelong dream and they have to communicate effectively Under Pressure etc etc so it's a really important job have you ever lost a race because your guy cracked and they got heavy legs no there was one training one we did it didn't matter too much where uh one of the guides didn't quite make it to the changeover point with the other one I had to run 150 meters by myself legend that was that was classic you're just putting your guards into pain I love it it was uh yeah it was a pretty funny one but uh yeah so my guides in the marathon uh for Tokyo are Tim Logan best Nate and Vincent donu a training partner so so I recently watched uh in the Olympics we had our decathlon bronze medalist whose name uh I forget now um but he had his other Australian teammate who made the finals who realized he wasn't going to medal basically chasing him down the straight screaming supportive abuse at him yeah is there any of that going on along with the Kenyans you know four lengths ahead we're on our seventh lap is there a bit of BU go it's the Paralympics come on Jared I've had a few races where uh particularly Timmy uh he's gone to me there's you know there's a runner in front of me that I probably should be beating and he'll go mate like you're not going to lose to this guy are you and like that's you know that that gets you going because he's like basically mocking you while you're in quite a bit of pain but um I remember World Champs 500 meters to go Timmy said you know this is is you know this is what you've effing been working towards for ages and that stuff just like pumps you up yeah it's good it's um yeah a couple of swear words couple of couple of actually you know productive sentences it's pretty good J what does it mean to you to be a paralympian like you know it's something that's probably one of the things I'm most proud of in my life but what is it you know you got to go to Rio you're about to do it again what does it make you feel when when someone calls you a paralympian yeah yeah it's it's uh definitely definitely probably yeah it's the one thing I like to introduce myself as in terms of like a thing that I've done in my life um I know when I was a kid meeting par Olympians them being my heroes like and then to even be like in the same to have the same thing you know paralympic the label of it the meaning of it the the symbolism of it it's incredible um it means the world to me and it uh I I find it interesting when people uh write an article about me if I've a quicker time particularly or when I went to the World Junior Championships for able-bodied uh and and the article is is like you know will Jared Clifford ever make the Olympic Games or you know and it's I don't know I don't like that because for me I've grown up with paralympic Heroes I've grown up with Olympic Heroes too but I've always dreamt about the paralympic games I've dreamt about winning a par Olympic gold medal that's my dream and to me to me that's that's my that's my thing that's what I'm working towards and it's just everything about my running career you know has been directed towards that and um I I I I'd like to think that people when they see me run uh you know this is the par Olympian not the guy that you know might be good enough to run in the Olympics like I'm I'm good enough to run in the Paralympics and contend for hopefully a medal or a gold medal like that's that's my thinking Jared Clifford we wish you all the best of course make sure you're following at en aore podcast um we're going to be celebrating our Australian athletes and not just celebrating medals celebrating great off um efforts achievements and moments on and off the field giv that good try rins just kiding we get everyone up next is Paul Harper now remember when you saw the run sheet for speaking about this today you like Paul Harper paralympian it's because he has so much going on in his life and happen so young in his journey see he's was speaking to him about his guide dog his life working with the government was pre me paralympic Su by yeah yeah um but he spoke about his achievements at the par Olympics and uh I think we spoke at the start about Jared Clifford not having you know his event in Tokyo the uh the other the opposite can be said for Paul well gold ball is a ball it's got a ball with bells in it and you roll it underarm U well I say roll you throw it underarm um comes down to 80k an hour 90k an hour and you throw yourself out and you block it with your body so it's like suer goalkeepers at each end hang on your body your body hang on your body and your face and your grind well you do wear a box okay but you can always hear when you hit a box was it no matter what the box it helps but it that's I could say it helps um I I watched gold ball at the Paro Olympics just gone um probably one of the more fascinating sports that I've watched at Paro Olympics um truly fascinating but what I love is that everyone is required to wear goggles with um that are blacked out is there in the history for a man who's known the gold bow sports for over 23 24 years um and you know been a participant have you heard of somebody cheating the system was there back in 2000 some Scandinavian player who pretended to be blind and hence the goggles then had to be uh part of the sport were they always part of the sport yeah no well they was someone I mean I don't um um I was a bit young so I don't know exactly the country and the situ so I won't get myself sued but there was a country where a couple of players said they were blind and they were only partially blind so they were cheating yeah there was someone cheating so we wear the um goggles and then ey patches underneath those goggles because yeah there over the years I mean you're at the top you mean the same way you get occasionally A drugs cheat you get it an aelis cheat I think also it also means that people on different spectrums of blindness can play because it makes everyone 100% blind so if low vision they can still compete and 2032 is going to be sick too obviously in Brisbane what that represents not just for sport but education employment you know socially whatever it is um the highlight of your career was the Melbourne com games where you broke the Aussie record in the 100 meter why did that mean so much to you and what time did you run oh God I can't remember the time now but just say 9.5 seconds just say just say I say I say I was but the biggest thing for me was about it would have been I think it was 119 but that I'd have to have to check on that but the what made it more special was you're by that point um I'd been in the lead athlete I'd swept over to Athletics and I'd been to a couple of um Commonwealth Games and i' been around the a body athletes now at first they were like don't know how to you know cope we know how to manage it but by that point I'd be been a Manchester Commonwealth Games been with these guys for years and so the athletic team was a tight unit and I was part of that unit not as an not like just as an extra but also there as as an athlete and they and um it was just a few key moments in that like when I W me then the track was amazing because we're running down the back street W back straight waving to the crowd in the MCG and the MCG is roaring laughing back at us because we're you know running around having fun after the race you know that sort of thing in the race itself Everything went perfect for me it was just like that perfect moment um like a that you train for for years and years and then you pull it off and you don't make a mistake and after you're just gone oh my God I just did it and then after we got back into the Village um our Paralympics come off games we have Villages where all the athletes live in a secure Zone and we walk back in and they have a live feed to the competition and as we walk in everybody stands everyone in the room stood up and started and clapped Us in and like oh my God that was just you know really special moment in regards to that as well I what one of the great quotes that I love about that run to you and I don't know if someone's used this as a book but this screams um you know Runner athlete book title but you said the time of your life cuz it's obviously you know for the experience of being at Melbourne but also you're literally running to your best time um so that was your PB of all time every all the race conditions came together for that one day in that one moment yeah it would have been it was the PB for a competition right personal best for nonathletes yeah yeah probably I mean train i' done better that's like that's the fish that got away probably have to just clear the copyright with green day as well Tommy Tommy Al I think you might struggle be honest a big thank you to Paul Harper once again reminder full interviews with our amazing guests and their stories are in the show notes Sarah Kate Rose is you actually did this interview by yourself I can't remember why but um I think why you had a baby was that the baby day yeah okay I turned like W's go like I think he had a baby 2 minutes next minut text had a baby like cool yeah yeah so Rose um a m of two um really interesting story as the whole and you can see in our show notes the full episode um spoke a lot about her IVF Journey um into having children um can swim too can swim and this is what we spoke about when referencing her time as a par Olympian we went to two par Olympics together correct was it Beijing and London yep sure is you what did you do you did Athens as well yeah did Athens as well and you're being very humble but you definitely could swim you were very bu good do you do do you miss it I really really miss it I get asked that question all the time I really miss the feeling of feeling fit and just feeling like on top of my game just healthy fit um skinny um so I definitely missed that aspect of it and I really miss what are you talking about you look fit oh thank you just a just a different kind of Fitness yeah just a different kind of fit swim is like a crazy Elite fit you know what I mean next level abs of steel um and yeah miss the comraderie of teammates traveling the world um and all of that yeah so I I really do miss it but I love seeing um how far paralympic sport has come and been able to watch that um on TV so still feel a part of it so you have a disability yourself correct what if you don't mind what what disability do you have um I've got dwarfism it's always funny on camera because you can't see um when it zooms in but yeah so I'm 13 cm got dwarfism swimming andwar what did you play different sports growing up and then you kind of found swimming and why was that the one that you gravitated towards yeah that's kind of exactly what happened so I'd always loved sport I come from a family that really enjoyed Sport and being active and actually had a um pool in my primary school and I noticed that I wasn't too bad against other AEL bods like when we were competing or training just doing you know those recreational lessons um I'd also loved a whole range of other sports but I was really bad and I would finish so far last and swimming was the one that I thought hang on like I think I think I could be good at this and it was it was actually around the time that the Sydney Paralympics um was on so I took one of my friends and I go let's let's have a look at this I knew nothing about Paro Olympic sport or people with a disability so we went went to the par Olympics and I watched the swimming um watched the whe chair basketball watched a whole range of sports Athletics and I saw people like me that I'd never ever seen before um and saw them dominating in their field and I thought it was a moment where I thought I can actually be good at something I can do this I love sport or I can give it a crack um and I felt really seen at that moment and my mat's like I've never seen you this stoked I was just buzzing for weeks after the Sydney paralympic so then I went um I called around and looked up how I could join a disabled organization when when it was back that's what it was like back then enjoy my local swimming Club um and then yeah really fell in love with the sport can we talk about you went to Athens and I don't want to speak out of turn but probably wasn't the best Paralympics ever um no one really came all that kind of stuff I was 1 so I didn't go but can you talk about what the experience was like when being a par Olympian which is still hard and I'm going to say that obviously I very lucky that I've been able to cut the mainstream we want more people disability so I'm not saying it's easy now however it has definitely improved so can you talk about the journey from when you first started and what it was like going to those games to kind of where it is today yeah absolutely so those games you kind of had to fund things for yourself you had to do everything for yourself I mean you didn't have the support that we see now and um like the the stands weren't jam-packed we didn't see the sponsorships that we see we didn't see the broadcast so You' kind of do you'd kind of see things like the abcc who still do it for phenomenal job or SPS or live streams things like that but it' only be glimpses it wouldn't be showing everyone um all the Aussies that are that are performing so I think for me as my first games I just thought that was it and then obviously Beijing the four years later they they lift it up again um and then and then London um and to what we see today so I think to see athletes at the moment get be able to be on Channel 9 Channel 7 um in sponsorship deals in in um employment and a whole range of things it has changed so much and would have that would have really change things for me had I been swimming um like had Athens been my first game some of these young kids now this is all they know so the um it's incredible the advancement of of sport and how far we've come but yeah it was a tough time like you kind of had to fund things for yourself you're training working I always worked when I um when I was an athlete um and always used to annoy my coach because I trained alongside Olympians and they didn't have to work I'm like mate I'm not sponsored I can't I can't do both but it's it's really fantastic to see um how far that we've come um but yeah man times have changed thank you very much to Sarah for sharing her story Kelly cartright yeah a friend of yours as you can tell by the way that you've abbreviated her name recently married congratulations barley wedding looked like a bar I did move house recently no invite me either I mean fair enough for you but I like genuinely am friends with her I know yeah I you feel B Gutt it I'm shut it no no kelza um is obviously super lead athlete gold medalist incredible person great mom but was also on the paralympic coverage oh yeah yeah she's doing the track and field events so you might be seeing her very soon uh Kelly came in to speak with us about her experience uh as being a paralympic and I didn't know gold medalist yeah wow long job here's the story when you're wearing a pro athetic running leg you actually only need one shoe for your real foot and you cut the sole of the other shoe and glue it to the bottom of a running Spike because you need the um the what do you call it the thread to be a to um you stick the bottom the sole of it on the you glue it on yeah and then put your spikes in well I don't know that yeah but even if you didn't have that it makes it quite difficult to run on ashev um unless you've got a special jogging leg or a leg specific and I had a sprinting leg um what's the cost of a of a running leg um look they're a lot cheaper than my leg um they're around1 to $20,000 for a running leg yeah you've got the Big Cahuna of walking legs don't you yeah I I finally got it I've been two years yeah how much is that bad boy it's about 90,000 but that's custom to you um Kurt would have um he's got the waterproof one he us in a kayak yeah so yeah I've got an amazing like I'm very lucky that I've been waiting two years for this leg so had some funny leg stories with K she often wasn't the best most organized person and forgets to charge them and then they go straight I thought you can talk about the one where they drank out of my leg I was going I got three I got the one of drink drinking at the party everyone was drinking out of their leg and in Beijing no London Kell was riding a bike and I was hanging on the back and we were checking out the village and as she was riding her leg fell off so I'm in a wheelchair hang on to her bike her leg falls off falls off the bike and I'm like com well you mean you should send a photo to Daniel Ricardo who's famous for a shoy you should show him your leggy well I think it's kind of gross I didn't drink out of it stin no it doesn't I clean the leg stink it they don't if you clean them okay proper hygiene I don't know about your shoes D but my leg doesn't S like that um why running you lost your leg why did you decide to go into a sport where you're at a complete disadvantage I mean why would why was not an upper body sport why not discus uh well I'm not built for discus that's that's honest um look I just loved running I've always loved cross country and I didn't love sprinting so much but again being in above MPT it is it is very difficult to run so you don't really want to run as long as um cross country yeah no um and then I just loved it I started going down to the track and meeting people and competing and I'm always always been a competitive person and qualified for my first games which was Beijing um but when I first got my running leg um jalong raised funds for me to get that Landy field yeah the old sprinting TR I ran for chill well do you guys want me to leave just so you you just don't understand the reference of the gtown mate okay I don't think many people listening to it and then and then um yeah but my aim was the London game so I thought I'd have about 5 years to really train and scrape through met Dylan and went to Beijing um so did well in Beijing didn't win a medal yes but 2010 World Championships how did they go that was in the leadup yeah I did I did quite well there I got two gold medals um but I had a really bad leadup to those games I actually had to have my leg re amputated which means go in get about a centimeter cut off the bottom um because being in above NE a team running you put three times your body weight through my stump my bone and I damaged it so much that I just needed to clean slate but as you know Dylan you got to do certain qualify certain events to get to the big event um so I had to I think it was 6 months not even before the World Championships isn't that funny I recently attempted a marathon um which is 42 km I got to 27 28 km why would you even do that he realized that he put on wanted to get a bit food post isolation yeah and he said came this on Friday thought of it on Saturday Kelly on radio he goes guess what I'm doing tomorrow dual I'm running a marathon no training I could run 4 and I was like don't do it what I was going to say was I have been complaining to my girlfriend I've done a couple of posts about my blisters on my foot oh God that's what I'm saying and here you are having to re amputate some of your leg because of the wear and tear of sport because you want to get back to sport which is probably stupid in hindsight um but yeah I to be honest if I look back on those games i' they went my best jumps that I've ever done or fastest race but up till that time it was I was the fittest and strongest I'd ever been in those five months and I had been in the two years two and a half years is because you kind of look at a timeline and think I don't have a lot of time you put 110 10% effort into that and just led me up to the London gam is really good so you got to London you the favorite um your dream as a young person was to be a sportswoman and what was that feeling like when you finally got that gold medal in the in the long jump um dream come true it sounds cliche but um it's just it's worth the ups and the downs and to see your family and your coach in the sideline that had put more effort into you being there than probably yourself um it meant the world to me um it meant that it was worth it the sacrifices are the times that you don't get to go and do all things with your friends that they're doing but um you just it was just I put so much effort into to winning that gold medal and um to stand on that Podium and he the national land them cuz I remember four years before hearing some of them in the Beijing games thank you some of them um and just knowing that's what I wanted and to know that I was there a big thank you to Jared Clifford Sarah Kate Rose Paul Harper and you just heard from Kelly cartright now Dill usually we'd be like to see you on a fortnite but guess what double week baby back next week next Monday uh as the Paralympics is officially underway we're going to be celebrating with athletes who are at the games uh they're in Paris we're talking about Kurt McGrath uh Emma Booth heat Davidson and Madison D Rosario I'll also I haven't told Angus this I'll send you a cheeky little voice memo about what's going on oh my gosh we're going to have live updates from Paris everybody uh we'll see you next week make sure you subscribe so you don't miss the episode [Music]