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Left suddenly and permanently paraplegic aged 14, Samanta Bullock dropped the sport she’d loved for half her life.
Growing up in a small town in South Brazil, she simply had no concept a form of tennis still existed for her.
It was only while working in local politics that a funding application from a wheelchair-tennis school fell on her desk – she was so disbelieving such a thing was possible she decided to investigate the school for possible fraud.
But when she showed up at what was, indeed, a wheelchair-tennis training school, and they asked her: “are you here to play?” – she couldn’t think of a non-awkward rebuttal. The rest is history. She became Brazil’s number one.
“Where did you find out about the existence of your sport?” We’d asked the world-class athletes who’d joined us in the Media Storm studio (figuratively-speaking, one Zoomed in from the Paris Paralympics).
“Through the blind people’s grapevine,” was his answer. “My mum accidentally sold a house to a visually impaired guy who was running a partially sighted football team in the late 90s.”
Until then, Keryn Seal had been playing alongside his full-sighted peers (“not very well”). He has since represented Great Britain 127 times, including the 2008 and 2012 Paralympic Games and three World Cups.
When Samanta came of athletic age, the Paralympics Games were not broadcast on her continent. Live coverage was exclusive to Europe, and even there, organisers had to pay networks to televise it.
If she’d seen wheelchair tennis in the media, she may have saved herself a 12-year hiatus over the most formative and athletic years of her life. Which is why Keryn – whose employer heads the Equal Play campaign seeking to reverse the exclusion of 75% of disabled kids from PE in UK schools – applauds Channel 4’s “fantastic” work in steering growing Paralympic viewing figures since London 2012.
This year’s tournament in Paris is the first in history at which all 22 sports will be broadcast somewhere in the world – including a record 160 nations, a steady uptick since London’s 115 in 2012.
Does this mean Keryn thinks we can hang up our coats? “It’s a very short answer, there’s still not enough coverage.”
There were 10 million tickets available for the Olympics – and only three million for the Paralympics, of which a third remained unsold by Wednesday’s opening ceremony.
What does it mean that the Paralympics will be broadcast on Channel 4, rather than our state broadcaster BBC, where back-to-back and primetime Olympics coverage takes place?
It can be argued that media coverage is proportional to the reduced public interest. But as we know from every Media Storm episode ever, the media often sets the narrative.
Neither of us writing know what it is like to be disabled. We also don’t know what it is like to be athletic. Being very much on the couch end of Couch-to-5k, we don’t watch the Olympics to get inspired to do a pole vault.
What the disparity in broadcast exposure reveals is less about relatability, and more about an underlying societal bias against people with disabilities.
Commendably, Channel 4’s 2024 Paralympic ad campaign takes ownership of the media’s role in steering perceptions, holding a mirror to the public for prejudicial perspectives of para athletes.
It follows in-house research that revealed 59% of viewers watched the Paralympic Games to “see athletes overcoming their disabilities” rather than “exciting sporting competition”.
Some of the slogans echoed in the constructively cringeworthy ad:
“She’s doing so well, considering…”
“He’s incredible for someone like that!”
“It’s so brave.”
Too cynical, according to critics; not cynical at all to those for whom these have been daily mantras of an athletic career. Keryn added one: “That’s pretty good, it gets you out of the house!” It put him off telling strangers what he does for a profession at all.