Ouch Talk Show #89 August 2012
bbc.co.uk/ouch/podcast

Presented by Rob Fraser 

rob	For the UK it's the biggest event on the disability calendar ever! The Paralympics are coming to London. They're unlikely to be here again in our lifetime so we're making the most of it. Today we've got a real mix of people from former athletes to parents, officials and the London 2012 hopeful to help us make sense of what is about to unfold over the next two glorious weeks. So stay tuned to our Paralympic Special. 
[Playing clip: I call upon Paralympic athletes from all over the world to meet in London in four years' time when once again you will inspire and excite the world with your sporting excellence [A chinese phrase).
That was Sir Philip Craven, President of the Paralympic Movement at the close of the Beijing Games in 2008. Stirring stuff, I was quite invigorated by that. So I'm joined today by Tony Garrett, a very old friend of the show, the man who's been guiding Ouch listeners through the Paralympic news and helping us make sense of some of the lesser known sports and the fiendishly complex classification systems. So in a word, Tony, and I do mean one word, how are you feeling on the approach to the home games? 	
tony	Excited. 	
rob	Good that was...brevity was what I was after. Now we're also very lucky to have Jane Blackburn with us, former Paralympic gold medal winner, stretching back from 1972 to 1992 by which point the games had begun to reach their more, shall we say, professional era - if that's not too insulting. So, Jane, again in a word how are you feeling now we're so close to the London games?	
jane	Same as Tony absolutely excited. 	
rob	Fantastic. And we also have on the line from Nottingham Helen Hynd, she's the mother of two Paralympic swimmers, Sam and Oliver, who both have a form of muscular dystrophy. Helen's also going to be a Paralympic torch bearer in Brent in London on the morning of the opening ceremony. So, Helen, what's your one word? 	
helen	I'm absolutely ecstatic about it all. Ecstatic. 	
rob	Ecstatic. Right. So later in the show we'll also have a couple of other voices joining us, or at least we hope they will. But to kick things off we need to start right back at the beginning I think, Tony, so where did the Paralympics start and how? 	
tony	Yeah I mean all really fascinating. It goes back to Stoke Mandeville hospital, it goes back to the end of the Second World War where there was lots of servicemen coming back, obviously very badly injured to Stoke Mandeville hospital, which was and still is very much the home of spinal injury hospitals - although there's a lot more around the country now - and Sir Ludwig Guttmann who was the main man there, sort of realised that sport would play a real important part in people's rehab. And that's really where it started, in a nutshell, Stoke Mandeville. 	
rob	And this is something that had never been thought of before using sports as a means of rehabilitation? 	
tony	Absolutely not, it was just never even on the agenda back in those days. And you would have had a very short and sheltered life. And Sir Ludwig Guttmann realised that this was a big opportunity to get people fit, to rehab to ultimately extend people's lifespan. And we've just had an excellent drama on the BBC2 just last week which really covered the whole area and I know talking to a lot of people it was very close to people's hearts, a lot of people have been exactly through spinal injuries and a lot of our Paralympians competing in 2012 have come through spinal injuries and have come through realising that sport is a major part in recovery. 	
rob	So we've got a clip of the man himself, Mr Ludwig Guttmann, or should I say Herr Ludwig Guttmann, from an episode of Man Alive - if you're too young for that, that was a current affairs programme which aired on the BBC through the '60s and '70s. This is a clip from way back in 1965, and in his own words this is an explanation of why he got paralysed soldiers up and moving. 
[Playing clip:
And then all the young soldiers came in terrible conditions from the battle front and it occurred to me that it would have been a serious omission not to include sport in the physical, psychological and social rehabilitation of these seriously handicapped people in a country in which sports belongs to everyone's life in one way or another.]
So I'm keen to understand the spirit of Stoke Mandeville hospital a bit more as everyone's always talking about it. Now Jane I know you were at Stoke Mandeville back in 1969, can you just briefly tell me how you found yourself there and how that led you into meeting Ludwig Guttmann and getting into sport?	
jane	Well I had a car accident in '69 and I was taken to local hospital in Redhill and Sir Ludwig actually came down to see me while I was there. And he was shocked at the condition that he found me in and said I needed to get to Stoke Mandeville as quickly as possible. And so I was taken to Stoke Mandeville and during my sort of recuperation when I got up out of bed which was about three months later, sport was on the agenda if you liked it or not - you had to do sport. 	
rob	And this is an attitude that patients now have the right to not to participate at all if they don't want to. But it sounds like at the time Ludwig was a cantankerous almost tyrannical figure, would you agree with that? 	
jane	He was, he was quite frightening. If he saw you in the corridor and you were just sitting chatting, "Why are you not doing something? You should be doing something, anything just pushing along not sitting doing nothing." 	
rob	Did this not upset you slightly? 	
jane	Oh you were frightened of him. 	
rob	So you were almost terrorised into...	
jane	Well you were, you were...	
rob	...participating in sport. 	
jane	...frightened into it. Especially into sport. We did at least two hours in an afternoon, every afternoon we did archery and table tennis. It was just in a small what they called 'the archery unit' because they didn't have the stadium built then. The stadium was built next door to Stoke Mandeville hospital in '69 and it was finished in the '70s and opened by the Queen. And now the patients from the hospital do wander over and do sport in the stadium rather than in the hospital itself. 	
rob	And you competed very soon after your car accident in the Paralympics way back in the very early days of the competition. Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like back then? 	
jane	Well my first event was the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh and we flew up there, I was petrified, I didn't know anybody. The accommodation was in the army barracks at Turnhouse but we were beautifully looked after by the army and the catering was amazing. And I won a couple of medals there; gold for table tennis. And archery was my big event at the time but I'd switched to table tennis eventually. But things were very different. 	
rob	I mean I remember there seems like when you competed at the Paralympics in Toronto there was huge amount of well intentioned chaos I think especially the...there were still problems with accommodation and lifts and things like that. 	
jane	Well yes. The accommodation was in a tower block of about 12 storeys. And there were two lifts and they would take two people and there must have been I don't know how many of us in there, but we had to book a space in the lift to get down in the morning, so you had to get up about five o'clock and get your space in the lift about six.	
rob	How many athletes were there who were queuing up? 	
jane	Well there must have been 200. 	
rob	200. 	
jane	Yes waiting to get down. Then you'd eventually get down, you might just be in time to grab something to eat for breakfast, likely as not you weren't though, and then you get your bus to the venue. You start playing table tennis about ten o'clock, half past nine/ten o'clock and you'd play all through the day and all the events were done in that day. Then my friend and I - he won the men's and I won the ladies - we waited until one o'clock in the morning for our medal ceremony. We got back on the bus and got back home to the accommodation at one o'clock to get up again at five to play the team event. 	
tony	At least Jane you didn't have to worry when you got back that night to wait for the lift at one o'clock in the morning. 	
jane	No nobody around, it was just the two of us went up, thank you very much. 	
rob	So it's ideal preparation isn't it really. How did you prepare? Well I queued for a lift for two hours and have no breakfast. It's ideal isn't it really?	
jane	It wasn't very relaxing I must say. 	
rob	Tell me a little bit more about the very first Paralympic Games in Rome in 1960 where I believe there were some of the most bizarre accommodation for athletes that's ever been constructed. 	
jane	Yes well of course I wasn't there then. 	
rob	Of course. 	
jane	But Margaret Maughan has told me that when they got to Rome the accommodation was on stilts and they had to be carried up...the army turned up to accommodate them. And whenever they went, whatever time of day it was the army would lift them up and down the stairs. But they were shocked when they turned up and found the accommodation on stilts. 	
rob	It makes it sound like they're in the monsoon region of Bangladesh. 	
jane	I know, I don't know why that was the case. 	
tony	Arrivederci and all that. 	
rob	Yeah. And even more bizarre, well I guess this is a classic example of a good intentioned but slightly incompetent attempt at inclusivity, the Toronto games of 1980 had an opening ceremony which turned slightly farcical. 	
jane	Well always at the opening ceremonies the athletes sit outside as you know by the Olympics that have just been. You sit outside the stadium and you wait while all the lovely things are going on that you're not seeing, and you sit there maybe for two hours. And then we eventually wheel in and of course Canada we had the mounties on their horses doing a little show, which went down really well, but the horses had poo'd. So we had to wheel round dodging all the horses' poo. 	
rob	Did you succeed, did you manage to dodge it all? 	
jane	Well I did but it wasn't easy. 	
rob	Others weren't so lucky. 	
jane	We were sort of crashing into each other. 	
tony	Did you say crashing?	
rob	Yes. Were you there for this one, Tony? 	
tony	No, no, no I'm afraid to say you know for me table tennis was my sport and I never quite made the Paralympics, did European and World Championships and just missed out. 1984 would have been the games I would have got selected for. But I think it's what's really interested you know we don't need to hark back particularly, but what I think made us all very social and very with it and very grown up is that when we got selected for great international competitions it could have been in Germany or Switzerland, you know the accommodation was in a nuclear shelter in Switzerland and we used to often drive...	
rob	A nuclear shelter? 	
tony	A nuclear shelter in Switzerland. 	
rob	Was this strictly necessary? 	
jane	Well I don't know if it was necessary but the door was...I remember it was about eight foot thick when the door was shut. And the air circulated round but one or two people just freaked out they wouldn't stay there. 	
rob	I'm not surprised. 	
tony 	Modern Paralympians don't know how cushy they've got it. 	
rob	Well this is the thing, I mean, Tony and I want to bring Helen in here from Nottingham if you're still there, hello Helen. 	
helen	Hi, I'm here. 	
rob	Let's go into that Helen because your sons, Sam and Oliver are competing in London at swimming in the S8 class. 	
helen	That's right. 	
rob	So what I want to know is in the more modern era of disability sport how did they get into it and progress so far, what's their story? 	
helen	Really they've progressed from being very, very small babies/toddlers going into swimming. Like you mentioned before Sam got into swimming we were advised really as a physiotherapy tool for him because he was born with a lower limb abnormality. This is before we actually realised and it came to light that he'd actually got muscular dystrophy, a form of muscular dystrophy. So we took him swimming on their advice and we're just so grateful for the sport because our two guys would certainly be a lot, lot worse if they didn't participate in sport. 	
rob	And were they enthusiastic about swimming before their disability became more apparent? 	
helen	Yeah. I mean they've always been keen swimmers and they've gone through the whole council run badge schemes, you know, from duckling to right up to honours. And then obviously got into a local swimming club and things moved on from there. And then obviously with their disability they got into disability sport with Disability Sport England, and the swimming events that they actually run and went through classification so they could actually compete in disability sport. 	
tony	Absolutely Helen the whole sort of grass roots area from disability sport from Disability Sport England and that is really important and that has...	
helen	Oh yes it's fantastic. 	
tony	...that's much more streamlined in the last five to ten years hasn't it, Helen? 	
helen	Oh most definitely yeah. Even through Sam's you know from competing first when Sam started with Disability Sport England up at the DSE Championships things have moved on tremendously. And it's absolutely fantastic what time, effort and funds go into that level of sport. And it is certainly a very, very important pathway up to elite level which is what the boys are at now. 	
rob	You're listening to the Ouch Paralympic Special. Around the table with me today I have Tony Garrett, BBC disability sport expert. We have former GB Paralympian Jane Blackburn. And mother of two 2012 Paralympians, Helen Hynd. Now we have the President of the International Paralympic Committee, Sir Philip Craven, on the line. Thank you for joining us. 	
sir philip	Hello to everyone, particularly Jane. Fantastic. 	
jane	Hello Philip. 	
rob	Now, Philip, how are you feeling and what's on your 'To Do' list just a few days before the games start? Give us an insight, you're an Englishman it's in your home country I mean this is incredible. 	
sir philip	The 'To Do' list at the moment is interviews, interviews, interviews like this one, which makes me really excited about the games, even though I'm trying to sort of keep calm prior to the big one. I was at the Olympics I tried to calm down and rest up and now I'm ready for action come Saturday you know. 	
rob	And the Olympics in London were obviously a superb, resounding success. Do you think this has been a huge help for the Paralympics as well? 	
sir philip	Well I think what has been an incredible... That has been a help, but what has been amazing though is our journey with LOCOG, the organising committee over seven years, ever since in Singapore in 2005 Britain got the Olympics and the Paralympics. And that's been one heck of a journey with LOCOG very, very positive and that's why I'm just so confident the Paralympics are going to be fantastic. 	
rob	And how big are we expecting the TV audience to be? How many people will actually be able to view the games I mean just in Britain or all over the world? 	
sir philip	All over the world I think we're estimating a cumulative audience of four billion. And in Britain of course TV coverage is on Channel 4; radio coverage, as you know, on the BBC and we've been really impressed with Channel 4 how they've really put the games out there over the last two years. 	
tony	Philip, I mean it's great to see we've obviously been involved for many years...	
sir philip	Absolutely. 	
tony	...working on Paralympic sport, and it really has been great to see the sea change in the last ten years. Beijing was a sensational games and went down really well and this has moved on to the next level now Philip hasn't it?	
sir philip	Well it has indeed. I think that when I became President the thing that I really hated to keep hearing was that word 'disability' because it's sport. It's sport for individuals and I've just been listening to - sorry I've forgotten the lady's name, the mother of...	
rob	It's Helen Hynd. 	
sir philip	Helen, and just seeing what sport can do for people. And as you move through the different levels and it's just so exciting. And so yes Beijing really I think what I'd like to say about Beijing was I said they were the greatest games ever, but really the world took notice of the Paralympic movement and the Paralympic Games in Beijing. But I think in London this is where the games as Adam Smith said, "Take off into sustained growth" and I just can't wait really. 	
tony	And Philip I mean Jane's here obviously and just before you joined us we were talking about going back to Stoke Mandeville, back to the hospital, back to the spinal injuries and obviously you and Jane played together on quite a few occasions over at Stoke Mandeville, so we've just been talking about how important the hospital, the stadium and the whole Stoke Mandeville legend has been. And of course one of the concerns now is that actually with spinal injuries hospitals aren't really encouraging patients to get out there and do it. So perhaps you and Jane can give your views on that?  	
Sir philip	Well I think... Sorry, Jane, you first.	
jane	No. Well I was just going to say unfortunately the Patients Charter makes it so that you don't have to do anything; you don't have to do physio, you don't have to sport, you don't even have to get up if you don't want to. And in my day if you... I mean I used to try and hide in the toilet as it was because I was tired out doing everything. 	
rob	So, Sir Philip, do you think we need a bit more of the forceful spirit of Ludwig Guttmann backing the games today? 	
sir philip	Well we do and I'm the one who's been really pushing this along with Kevin Baker, from WheelPower at Stoke Mandeville. And I had three weeks in an excellent spinal unit by the way in Southport because I broke my femur in Korea in December doing something I thought I was 18 rather than 62 at the time. And so I got great medical really what should I say convalescence I was there for three weeks while my hip healed up. But I was able to observe how there doesn't seem to be the time anymore for this, and this is so crucial. You know when you've had a major accident you've got to find fun back in your life. And by doing some sports and some games you know... I remember the first day in '66 Sept...no it would be, when would it be - November '66 I went down to the gym at Southport and they stuck me in front of a mirror and said, "Practise your balancing in your wheelchair." Well maybe the last thing I wanted to do was look at myself. And just off to the left, there was a table tennis table which is Jane's great sport, and if I'd have played table tennis I would have practised balancing the chair without even thinking about it. And so sport can do so many different things for people - they can have fun when really they're in a pretty serious situation if their legs or maybe their arms don't work anymore. You don't need to become a Paralympians - hey it's fantastic if you can and you do and you dedicate yourself to becoming that - but sport can be this vehicle to maybe get over bad times and move forward and think of jobs, think of girlfriends, boyfriends whatever you want to do, but it is social. 	
rob	And one final quick question from Tony. 	
tony	Absolutely, Philip. Helen, you've got a fairly important role to play with the flag ceremony haven't you? 	
helen	Yeah with the Paralympic Torch Relay yeah I'm carrying the torch. I was really, really, really overwhelmed when the International Paralympic Committee chose me as one of the torch bearers. 	
sir philip	What time are you doing that? 	
helen	Quarter past seven I start my relay in Brent in London on the day of the opening ceremony next Wednesday. 	
sir philip	Is that the morning? 	
helen	Yes. 	
sir philip	Yeah. Okay I'm there at eight o'clock, I think I'm kicking off at eight o'clock at Stoke Mandeville the previous evening. 	
jane	Oh fantastic. 	
rob	And, Jane, aren't you joining Sir Philip? 	
jane	Yes, Phil, I've taken Margaret Maughan's place. 	
sir philip	Oh have you? 	
jane	Because I don't know if you know Seb Coe has whisked her off to the opening ceremony and she's got to do something - all very secretive. 	
sir philip	Ooh  you shouldn't be saying that on national radio. 	
jane	Well she doesn't know what she's got to do yet. 	
rob 	We should point out that Margaret Maughan is one of the very oldest surviving Paralympians.	
sir philip	I can't tell you what I'm saying in my opening ceremony speech but Margaret Maughan's name's going to be mentioned. 	
tony	Just to clarify Margaret Maughan won Great Britain's first ever gold medal at the 1960 Paralympics. 	
jane	In Rome. 	
rob	In Rome. Indeed. Thank you so much for your time, Sir Philip, we really appreciate it because we know how busy you are. And the very best of luck for the next couple of weeks. And he's gone. So, Tony, when did the Paralympics become an 'elite' sport I suppose rather than a sort of all inclusive thing and what is elite anyway in disability terms?   	
tony	Well it's a lot more serious than when I was competing for Great Britain sort of back in the sort of '70s and '80s and I think there was a major, we just touched on it, 1960 was the first Paralympics in Rome, I'll get Jane to talk about her achievements shortly, but I think a lot of people would say sort of roundabout the Barcelona Games was where I think it really moved into the new era. Would you say that Jane? 	
jane	Yes I think so. 	
rob	This is about '92 we're talking then? 	
jane	Yes '92. Well perhaps even in Seoul as well because...	
tony	Four years earlier. 	
jane	Yes when you know we've sort of got the uniforms the same as the able-bodied. Before that all we used to get was a couple of t-shirts which wasn't really good enough for a week's table tennis. 	
rob	Sounds like you're appearing on a quiz show. 	
jane	It was not too bad for the women but the men were usually a bit whiffy by the end of the week! They were always trying to get you to wash their shirts for them. But we still did the training, although we didn't have the facilities. I used to train five nights a week and go to Stoke Mandeville to train in the new stadium as it was then every other weekend at a sports club called SPAC. And I used to drive to Watford once a week, to Worthing once a week and then I had three sessions in my local sports centre, often training in the men's changing rooms and sometimes the men would come in and change. It was very awkward.	
rob	And I presume you just got on with it. Or was this a blushing moment?	
jane	Yes we just carried on playing we totally ignored them and they ignored us. 	
tony	Helen, it's changed somewhat now hasn't it with the boys? 	
helen	Yes it has it's great isn't it, the facilities are out there and the national governing bodies and the British Paralympic Association I mean British Paralympic Association do so much for the guys here in Britain to be able to train and perform at that level. As do the national governing bodies; British Swimming obviously are connected to the boys and obviously lottery funding and UK Sport and it's absolutely fantastic. 	
rob	Helen you told me earlier that your sons, Oliver and Sam, are currently in holding camp...	
helen	That's right. 	
rob	...which sounds rather strict sort of Soviet style Gulag, I mean are there snipers, I mean is it comfortable? 	
helen	No it's absolutely fantastic. The atmosphere is absolutely great all the support teams are around them and it's all about preparing that last final leg of a very important period of perhaps four years hard to hard graft. 	
rob	How much will you see them now between now and when the event starts, not at all or...?  	
helen	No I'll probably see them from a distance, a quick wave but no we won't see them now between now and the games. 	
rob	Could you if you wanted to or is it really a case of...	
helen	No, no, no. 	
rob	No. 	
helen	No I mean obviously there are ground rules and it's for a reason, it's so they can actually focus on what they're doing and what they've got to do and the job in hand, and I believe that's right. 	
rob	And how much of an impact has it had upon their social lives as young men, I mean does it make it difficult for them to go to let's say friends birthday parties or on summer holidays or thing like that? 	
helen	Now look they have to give up a lot as does any athlete at that level you have to give up things to make things happen. But no it doesn't stop them. And it's given the boys such a fantastic life so far I mean they've been all round the world, they go on training camps, they know guys - other athletes from China, from America, from Australia they've never had that opportunity before, it's absolutely fantastic. 	
tony	And I think, Helen, it's really important that in just a couple of short sentences the Paralympic athletes train as hard as the Olympic athletes and they're as dedicated, I think most people now realise that, but basically now it's complete focus they,  the Paralympic sport and the swim squad and all the squads, there's a great bonding between them all isn't there they actually love being with their fellow swimmers, there's a real bonding isn't there? 	
helen	Oh goodness yeah, it's a great team. The Paralympic swim team they've got such a bond together and I think that's really important and I'm sure the other sports do have. And obviously Paralympics GB as a team all support each other. I mean the supporters from the swimming, I mean we're going to go along to some finals that we know the boys aren't even taking part in to support the rest of the swimmers. And that is the feeling amongst the team and amongst the supporters. But you know the boys always say coming on to disability sport and they train as hard as the able-bodied it's not about disability it's about ability and both boys they train with able-bodied swimmers. And Ollie trains at Nova in Mansfield and they are, apart from Charlotte Henshaw, they are all able-bodied swimmers, but they don't look at Ollie and Charlotte as being any different. They're part of the squad. 	
rob	So that brings us back nicely to today's Paralympians, on the line from her training camp in Portugal we have one of our hopefuls, 19 year old British wheelchair racer, Hannah Cockcroft, hello Hannah. 	
hannah	Hello. 	
rob	Hello. And I know this is your first Paralympics and you broke the world sprint record back in May at a Paralympic test event in the Olympic Stadium in London. So just tell us a little bit about the routine for the morning of a competition. Tell me about all the mundane stuff when you get up what do you have for breakfast, what's it going to be like? 	
hannah	I try to run a competition day much to what I do a training day really. It's kind of like always early mornings. I think I race at 12:15 at the Paralympics on the first day so it's kind of an awkward time because it's kind of the afternoon as well. But I'll probably be up for like half past six just because it's just the timings of everything. So if I start racing at 12:15 I've got to be on call at like 11:15 and then you've got an hour's warm-up before that so that's 10:15, an hour to get to the track is 9:15 and everything just takes so long to do. So the day starts really, really early. I always have eggs for protein, just gives you a bit more energy. So that's my morning breakfast every day anyway so it's alright. 	
rob	Literally nothing else just boiled eggs?	
hannah	Just boiled eggs, maybe a slice of toast if I'm feeling like if I feel like I need it. But normally on race days I've got so many butterflies in my tummy I can't eat very well. 	
tony	I was going to say do you have poached, scrambled or just plain boiled? 	
hannah	Well whatever the hotel's got really. 	
rob	This is a sporting tip - just eat eggs. And I know you often see a lot of the athletes just before they're racing with their iPods on is there any particular track that you listen to just before you start competing? 	
hannah	Yeah there's a song called 'Hold On' by SBTRKT and I always listen to that before I compete because it's got one line in it says 'You are undefeatable' and I kind of just...if I've got that in my head before a race it just kind of really sets you up there. So that's my song. 	
rob	Okay. Now tell me what about that final walk on that push up to the start line what is going through your head at that moment? Do you even notice that you're in a stadium and there's thousands of people there? 	
hannah	I think I will notice. The thing with the Paralympics is I've never experienced anything like this, the World Championships maybe there were 2,000 people at a push there. So the biggest crowd I've ever competed in front of is 5,000 people at the BT Paralympic World Cup and that was like so scary I was so, so I was like mortifyingly scared, it was really, really loud there. 	
rob	 	
hannah	But this is going to be completely different. 	
rob	You won't be able to block it out then you just don't think that's going to be possible at all?	
hannah	Yeah I don't think that's going to work. I've been given advice to take it in for a few seconds and just realise that this is pretty big what I'm about to do so I guess it's going to be one of those get there see what happens. 	
rob	Let's bring Jane in for a moment. 	
jane	Well I don't think you want to block it out totally do you because I think the crowd are going to go mad when they introduce you and it'll motivate you to...with all the cheering I'm sure it'll motivate you to go in faster. 	
hannah	Oh definitely you know it's nice to have that much support you know you never get that many people at a Paralympic event, so it's going to be amazing. It's just something I... You can't even put it into words like how extraordinary it's going to be. 	
tony	I mean Hannah it's a good job we had the test event back in May because that just gave you a little bit of an insight into the stadium and the atmosphere.	
hannah	Oh yeah the test event was great. I didn't realise how long the tunnel was going to be between the warm-up track and the actual stadium; I was like this is going on forever, and it's all uphill. But it's really cool because you've got that long to realise focus on what you're about to do and get your thoughts in order. I know exactly what I need to do before I race I have certain things to concentrate on. So hopefully I can just remember it all and get out there and do my thing and it'll be amazing, but we'll see. 	
tony	And I think, if my memory serve me right, Hannah, that particular morning back in May the transport system went wrong getting you from the hotels to the track didn't it?	
hannah	It did. That was a terrible day yeah. Something just kind of, you know, the bus that was supposed to take us to the stadium that morning crashed before it got to us and then the taxis you know to take our race chairs and I was like there's no point in me going without my race chair. So we had to wait for more to come and then we got there and we'd missed first call, we'd missed warm-up. I'd missed doing everything that I normally do pre-race. So it was kind of like right get out there, get in your chair and just do whatever you can do. So I kind of got out there with the mentality of like I'll just get this one over with and I broke the world record. 	
rob	And yet still broke the world record exactly. 	
jane	Well done. 	
rob	And I'm wondering once this is all over in a couple of weeks' time will your training regime slacken a little bit. Will it be time for you to actually go out and I don't know will we see you in the pub? 	
hannah	Well you know it was my 20th birthday two weeks ago I think so I'd kind of like to celebrate that but we have world champs next year and then we have the Commonwealth the year after so there's a lot to work for, so I've been told I get a week off after the Paralympics and then I'm back into training. 	
rob	Make the most of that week, I know you will. 	
tony	I'm sure it's going to be slightly longer than a week Hannah because I know that you want to go and see one of your favourite groups again, just tell us who? 	
hannah	McFly. I would love to go and see them again. 	
tony	And how many times have you seen McFly? 	
hannah	Nine times. 	
tony	Nine times. So once the games have finished it's McFly, chocolate and quite a bit of shopping?	
hannah	Yeah that kind of sounds perfect right now. 	
tony	We'll book you in for that. 	
hannah	Thank you. 	
tony	Hannah, really good luck. A few busy days there in Portugal getting the fine tuning before you head back in the next couple of days. 	
hannah	Yeah I think I head back on the 26th so not long left and training's going really, really well. I'm loving it out here but it's hard work because it's so hot. But I'm feeling good so hopefully everything's going to go really, really well when I get to London. 	
tony	Up to the rest of the squad. 	
rob	Best of luck from all of us on the programme Hannah. 	
hannah	Thank you very much. 	
jane	Good luck. 	
hannah	Thank you! 	
rob	Well between the 29th August and 9th September you'll be getting to know some of the Paralympic GB athletes very well. BBC Radio Five Live, the BBC website and Channel 4 television otherwise known as 'the opposition' in these parts are covering it more than ever before. So do other nations cover it as well as we do, will they be watching Hannah and the like as well Tony? 	
tony	They certainly will. I mean in this country we have been absolutely the forerunner and the flag bearers of covering Paralympic sport and indeed we've won awards back from TV's coverage of the Athens Paralympics and radio likewise and online since then. So Great Britain has been absolutely upfront. However what has changed in the last four years really, the last four to five years, is that the rest of the world has woken up that Paralympic sport actually is a good media, is a good sport, is competitive and the top sports standalone. One of the few countries that still hasn't really got the hang of this yet is America because they always seem to be behind on these things. 	
rob	Why is that? 	
tony	Well I think interestingly, Jane may come in on this as well, it actually goes back to 1984 when the Paralympics should have been held in America. And actually in the end because the American broadcasters decided that the Americans didn't want to watch Paralympic sport, weren't interested, they decided not to invest any money into what was going to be the Paralympic Games. And in the end Stoke Mandeville and Great Britain had to come to the rescue and in the end the games were split. So in 1984 the wheelchair sports were all taken care of in this country and at Stoke Mandeville and the sort of amputee, CP sports were held in Long Island in 1984 so interestingly, and they still now America are well behind the thing, I believe there has been, and Helen may have picked this up as well, NBC have come under, rightly so, a lot of criticism, they didn't do that much from the Olympics live, but nothing on the Paralympics, so they have now just decided that they will cover a bit more delayed coverage, a week or so later, on NBC. But the Americans are still one of the channels well behind, but Brazil right across the world will be live coverage of the Paralympic Games. 	
rob	So Jane you were one of the athletes at that time who could and very probably should have had a trip to Los Angeles for the '84 games, the Regan games, and yet you ended up back in good old Stoke Mandeville. Was there any resentment about this at the time? 	
jane	Well not really. We had to do a big fundraising because they had six months to organise it. And they really did do fantastically well to get us all around in schools and get the beds and I mean it was all a bit basic but Stoke Mandeville really got their act together. And the Americans really let us down because they couldn't get the sponsorship and that was that. 	
rob	And let's just compare this, six months Stoke Mandeville had to organise a Paralympics, London had seven years. It's not easy. 	
jane	No it's not easy. But at the time we used to have international games every year. So they had the basic groundwork of it, it wasn't as if it had come out, you know, sort of out the blue and they had to organise it. 	
tony	And they used to completely get the local schools and the youth hostels and get, you know, make sure they had the school halls to put all the accommodation in. It was because clearly there were not many hotels around and hotels that were accessible in those days, back in '84, were very, very, very limited. So it was amazing, Jane, wasn't it? 	
jane	It was. 	
rob	More two hour queues for lifts I imagine. 	
jane	No, no lifts. 	
rob	No lifts at all. 	
jane	Everything was the ground floor. That's something. 	
rob	We mentioned the father of the games earlier Ludwig Guttmann. 	
tony	Guttmann. 	
rob	Guttmann sorry is it Guttmann, I beg your pardon, Papa Ludwig Guttmann as he was known to his friends, I want to go on and talk about the legacy of the games but this little clip going back again to the Man Alive documentary I mentioned earlier, this describes Guttmann's ethos for the games in a nutshell, so take a listen to this. 
[Playing clip: 
"He's the doctor who has forced paralysed people to walk, laugh, argue, earn wages, run up debts - to take their place in the world of normal people by bullying, by inspiring and by deliberately using the competitive and demanding disciplines of sport he turns cripples into champions."] 
Absolutely extraordinary. People don't talk like that on the BBC anymore do they? 	
jane	Not very PC. 	
rob	Not very PC at all. So I want to move on to talk about changing attitudes to disability, and I don't know about you guys but my condescension radar will be red hot I think during these games because I'm very much, as I'm sure you are too, rather annoyed by the adjectives such as 'brave' and 'special' that are often used to describe Paralympians. I don't think that Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps would ever be referred to as 'brave' or 'special' it would sound rather pejorative. And so Helen let's come to you on this, does it annoy you these kind of descriptions as being a tad patronising? 	
helen	Look these guys out there are normal people they just have adversity to cope with, and that's the bottom line. And they cope with it. But they are normal people. They're like Usain Bolt they're like all the rest. They're just normal with adversity. And they just get on with it. 	
tony	I just want to ask Helen a quick question to that answer. Helen, how do the boys and the swimmers feel when they hear comments along 'brave this' and 'courageous that' does it affect them, does it annoy them, or not? Or do they just let it ride? 	
helen	I think speaking of our boys they just let it ride because they're very focused, they're very grounded lads and yeah they know what condition they've got to cope with. But we've always treated them as normal and we've never treated them as anything different and I think it's just about attitude and obviously hopefully this is what will change with the Paralympic movement. 	
rob	And Tony you've probably got some opinions on this the Guttmann way of going about things much as it might be considered to be slightly controversial now, he was a big believer in socialising and being seen in public was a very important thing for disabled people. They needed to work and pay taxes to be properly included, is this something which we're forgetting about, like the Patient's Charter giving patients the right to frankly do nothing.	
tony	No I think absolutely I think it has changed. I mean I think the whole Guttmann philosophy is absolutely right and I think nothing has really changed. You talk to, there's quite a few people, Jane and myself, and we all know that you know are at the spinal hospitals and actually saw sport even four years ago watching it on the BBC, and actually they're in the hospital they've just had a car crash or whatever may have happened to them, and actually they've seen this and this has triggered it off. So it's gone the whole full circle. Guttmann absolutely started that. There's a few youngsters coming through and with swimming you see which Chloe Davies who's our youngest swimmer, she is 13. Ellie Simmonds four years ago was 13. And as we've seen at the Olympics there's some pretty good young swimmers coming through. And I think even for Ellie come the games she has got a lot of serious competition because the youngsters are coming through so that's going to be fascinating. 	
rob	And Helen let's go back to you, where do you think Oliver and Sam would be without sports in their lives?	
helen	It's hard to know but like I say the hospital and I truly believe that their words are right that they would be a lot worse with their particular condition without the sport. And I think it's given them, I mean certainly for Oliver, I mean his condition, his muscular dystrophy has started to really take hold of his body and give him impairment quite drastically really in the last couple of years. And his sports given him a way of channelling that feeling and obviously getting over and getting his head around things and giving him a drive in life. 	
tony	Helen, now you and I have obviously known each other, bumped into each for a few years at a few swimming pools, and I remember even before I think it was before Beijing or Athens we'd talked and obviously we were just starting to find out about Ollie, but Ollie's really come strong now in terms of where Sam was always the winner of the two roles have reversed a little bit haven't they? 	
helen	Yeah but you know those guys are both sort of up at number one in the world. It really comes down to whoever gets it on the day really I think, particularly in the 400 freestyle. But yeah credit due to Ollie he's worked very, very, very hard. But like we said earlier, you know, it doesn't happen in four days or four months or whatever, it happens over a period of sort of ten years. Ollie's been swimming since he was nine competitively, be it at grass root level competitively, right up to the level he is at now, I mean, you know he's 17. So that again is eight years of hard graft. 	
tony	And final question from me Helen, as a proud mum and a lot of proud parents there, you've got a bit of a dilemma how do you sort of cheer them...well you obviously clearly both cheer them both on but it's a dilemma a little bit for you who's going to win and who comes second or third. 	
helen	Do you know, Tony, do you know what it's all about - it's about 'Team Hynd' and do you know I'm probably in the best position. Yes it is hard I agree and it is quite stressful. But you know we're probably in the best position because I suppose really we don't lose do we? We've got one, we've got two you know we've got two up there and that's very special isn't it? 	
rob	Go Team Hynd. 	
helen	Go Team Hynd. 	
rob	So thank you everybody for joining me today; Jane Blackburn, Helen Hynd, Sir Philip Craven, Hannah Cockcroft and Tony Garrett. We'll be back at the beginning of October where we'll have the usual mix of discussion and guests. Liz Carr returns and Tony Garrett will be here again to help us talk through the aftermath of the biggest disability event to ever hit our shores. Jo Langton was the studio manager. And the production team were Emma Tracey and Damon Rose. Happy Paralympics to you all and goodbye.