Sarah Storey has criticised para cycling’s governing body, the UCI, for their running of the sport over the past two decades, believing they have failed to meaningfully improve coverage and visibility.
Storey is the most decorated British Paralympian in history and added an eye-watering 18th and 19th Paralympic golds to her collection in Paris in September by winning both the time trial and road race, before backing that up by winning both events again at the UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships later that month.
Her remarkable achievements earned the 47-year-old a place on the six-strong shortlist for BBC Sports Personality of the year alongside triathlete Alex Yee, darts star Luke Littler, cricketer Joe Root, footballer Jude Bellingham and Overwhelming favourite Keely Hodgkinson – who brilliantly won 800m gold at the Olympics on the athletics track.
However, Storey is 100-1 with most bookies to actually win SPOTY and didn’t finish in the top three any of the previous three times she has been nominated (2012, 2016 and 2021).
Tanni Grey-Thompson in 2000 and Jonnie Peacock in 2017 are the only Paralympians to ever finish in the SPOTY top three and the wait for a first winner from disability sport goes on.
Storey is not bitter about this but believes it is ultimately an impossibly high bar for a Paralympian to get over to win an award like Sports Personality of the Year due to a lack of coverage of para sport.
“I won four gold medals in 24 days in September 2024 and this is the fourth time I’ve been on the list,” explained Storey with a smile. “So maybe someone with a crystal ball will tell me whether all those fours means it’s a good thing.
“I think we don’t get enough coverage between Paralympics. Para-sport disappears for the four years in between. There isn’t sufficient funding and support for any of the para-athletes – maybe except tennis – for athletes to be professional. So, the vast majority of para-athletes will have a job of some kind.
“We have to train like we’re full-time, we have to deliver the performances as though we’re full-time. But we don’t get the coverage to bring the finance into the sport that we need to deliver that professional level. And it’s really, really challenging.”
Storey was set to appear in the latest series of ITV reality show Dancing on Ice only for an injury during the rehearsal process to rule her out of programme.
She was understandably gutted to miss out on such an experience, and her leg is still in a cast, but says the reaction to her pulling out was emblematic of the issues faced by para athletes.
“You only have to look at comments when I was found to be out of Dancing on Ice,” she explained. “People were like, ‘Well, who is she? Hopefully, she’s replaced with someone who’s more well-known’.
“And that just says a lot, doesn’t it? People don’t see para-sport on the TV enough to know who their most successful athlete is.”
Storey – who in addition to being GB’s greatest Paralympian has roles with Greater Manchester Moving, Lancashire Cricket Club and Manchester Met Institute of Sport – plants a lot of the blame for para cycling’s struggles at the door of the UCI, who also run the able-bodied side of the sport.
“The international governing bodies of para-sport need to start to speculate to accumulate on the coverage front,” she said. “We need to see the event at the highest level – World Championships, World Cup events – on the TV. We need to see that streamed with proper coverage.
“It needs to be properly put together, with commentators, with mixed-zone people, with a proper presentation, so that it’s delivered to the streaming platforms. And then, as print journalists, you can pick up the stories that come out of that.
“At the moment, you have to work really hard to find out who’s done what. And even when I’m following my own sport and I know where to look for it, it’s not well laid out, it’s not well done.
“When you look at the way the UCI do things, the only reason we got coverage at the World Championships in Zurich was because we happened to be part of the event where the able-bodied riders were. If we were standalone, like it will be next year in Belgium, I can almost guarantee the coverage will be nothing like what we experienced in Zurich.
“The UCI have had hold of para cycling since 2006/2007. So, in almost 20 years, very little has improved. Those integrated events are really important. And I think once we’ve got coverage, once we’ve got a narrative in between the Paralympic Games, we start to see those personalities coming out.
“Many people have, more than once, assumed that I’ve retired. And they were very surprised and pleased to see that I was selected again for another Games. So, I think it’s really important that people don’t make that assumption just because they haven’t seen you race on TV.”
BBC Sports Personality of the Year will be available to watch live on BBC One and iPlayer from 7pm on Tuesday 17 December.
