Good at being paralysed

Recently I went down to TEDx Bristol where I saw some inspirational speakers with thought provoking topics. I went all the way there just to see one of the speakers, Martyn Ashton who is a hero of my children and I. He was a hero initially because of his ability to do tricks on his mountain bike and later on a road bike. We are all keen mountain bikers in our family and there were lots of videos similar to his Road Bike Party of tricks being performed on a mountain bike but none on a road bike. When we saw it he immediately became a hero but a few years later he became a legend when he came back from a terrible accident which led to an even more inspirational film being made.

I’ve used this video to inspire children to overcome barriers to learning with the explanation that if somebody who is paralysed can ride a bike down a mountain then they can definitely improve their own outcomes. I was pretty excited about going to see Martyn at TEDx as you can imagine but I wasn’t expecting the whole event to have such an impact on me with some remarkable speakers and stories. The thing that sticks in my mind most is also the title of this post – if you don’t watch the whole video below at least skip to around 6 minutes and see Martyn’s take on it.

Martyn’s attitude reminded me of a couple of things from my life, with the first being the time my dad came out of hospital needing to use a wheelchair, which he needed for the rest of his life, and how keen I was to have a go in it to see how long I could balance on two wheels. I would practice for ages, trying to balance and move around the living room. I innocently wondered at the time if there was a world record for balancing a wheelchair on two wheels, which reading back now seems to be a bit inappropriate but at the time I was still a kid looking for things to be good at.

The other thing I was reminded of when listening to Martyn was the Rio Paralympics. My youngest son, who would have been 4 at the time, watched many of the events with us and asked, after one of the cycling events obviously(!), how can I race at the Paralympics? As he has no physical disability we had to tell him that he might be better aiming for the Olympics and explained that all the people in the Paralympics have a disability. He was a little confused as often some athletes don’t have obvious signs of disability. We are pretty sure he doesn’t have any hidden disabilities, but what about children and young people that do? Some questions spring to mind:

• Are they able to aspire to the Paralympics?
• Do we do enough to promote the positive effects of sport and exercise in general for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)?
• Is there a world record for balancing a wheelchair on two wheels and if not should Martyn Ashton go for it?