'Cheer For Us Too' Says MVA Elite Young Para Champion
Editor's note: Recently, in the MVA community email newsletter, I offered the opportunity for members of the wider Minerva community to contribute articles for MVA Today to have their voices heard.
This heartfelt piece is from MVA Athlete Harry, who won both a gold and silver medal at the England Athletics Indoor Para Championships earlier this year, about the disparity in support for athletics vs para athletics.
MVA has always been built on a culture of inclusivity and mutual support, so we wholeheartedly support Harry's message here. Thank you for sending it in, Harry.
Just imagine training three times a week for six weeks to get ready for your biggest competition of the year and you start your event to a crowd of silence that remains during the whole race then the next event is a non para event and the crowd screams and cheers.
Us para athletes should get an equal amount of cheering if not more cheering. How would you feel if no one cared or even looked at what you have been training for? How would you feel if that was your child getting no attention? As a para athlete myself I can safely say that cheering helps people run their best. I was once in a race with non paras and there was zero cheering apart from my father egging me on.
That was my least favourite race ever.
No atmosphere. No fun. Sometimes it feels like us para athletes are invisible to everyone else when we are on the track. The only difference between a normal athlete and a para athlete is that the para athlete has a classification that makes it more fair as the para athlete can now race with people like them, but when you don't cheer for them as they are different to you it makes them feel disheartened.
Most of the competitions I go to for the para races are good, but the ones that don’t have any cheering even from the parents whose kids are in the race. When this happens my heart sinks, why do the non para athletes get all of the cheering and not me who had to go get classified and work harder to get faster. This is not fair. At all.
Do you watch athletics on the tv? If you do then do you also watch the para events? If you don’t then you are part of the problem.
Para athletics is happening now. Watch them get the PB that they have been training hard for. Watch them hit the para pathway entry time. For para athletes getting on the pathway is a big thing especially if you're like me whose classification is not common. For example, I have never ran a race with a T36 which is my classification as there are only two others in the UK. Imagine watching a race with all three of the T36s in the UK. You would cheer. Three people with the same classification, the only three in the UK that are in power of 10. You should cheer. You should shout out in joy.
There are only a handful of athletic clubs in the UK who have a para session or sessions. That should change, and it can change with you. Go to a para event. Watch them. Cheer for them. They have put in hours of training for this. If you don’t cheer then why are you there? Para athletics is just like normal athletics only the races are rarer to come by. Rarer but better. People should watch para athletics and support it more and that is why. As a para athlete myself this topic means a lot to me.
— Harry Spry, U17 England Indoor 60m Champion
