The boccia may not start until Thursday but the Paralympic broadcasters have already started scoring points. There was probably no better way of ensuring British people tune in over the next couple of weeks than announcing that Rose Ayling-Ellis will be hosting Channel 4’s afternoon coverage. The actor beloved for her Strictly Come Dancing win two years ago communicates an uncontrived joyfulness every time she appears in front of a camera.
She knows her deafness will present a particular challenge in live sports presenting. It is both why it has never been done before, and what drew her to it. “I think I’m addicted to being the first of doing something,” she said this week. “I didn’t realise how hard it is. I did panic a bit and think, what have I signed up for?” The producers at Whisper TV, the company behind Channel 4’s coverage, are adapting their working methods around a role that traditionally relies on in-ear talkback.
Last year, Ayling-Ellis stole the show when she appeared in a partially-signed production of As You Like It in London’s West End. One can well imagine her doing the same over the next fortnight. Her new role serves as a reminder of sport’s power to change culture, and do good, when it puts its mind to it.
As fans we know we’re living in a time when the overweening greed of the people who run and profit from sport’s vast commerce can tarnish everything we love about it. But the quadrennial appearance of the Paralympics is a helpful waypoint, a sense-check of how sport can both reflect, and even sometimes trigger, societal shift for the better.
We saw it in 2012 when C4 launched the Last Leg and helped not only to raise the profile of parasport but also to shift the tone and language in which it was discussed and analysed. Humour was central was central the breakout after-hours show. It aided and underlined the move away from disability stories as motivational metaphor or trauma porn, a change that was welcomed as long overdue by the athletes themselves.
Instead of exploitative triumph-over-tragedy tropes, the focus since has been on normalising disability and putting the competitors’ sporting achievements centre stage. Ayling-Ellis outlined the importance of that in her own presenting goals: she said she refuses to present athletes’ stories as so-called inspiration, “so everyone else feels better about their lives”. Her aim is, rather, “for everyone to learn from and understand more about disability and that this is all just normal.”
It may be that this dose of normality can offer a rebalance after some of the more gluey sentimentality of the BBC’s Olympics coverage. We all understand human drama and emotion are why we watch, and that a good proportion of the Beeb’s talent remains the gold standard in sports presenting. Unfortunately, there were also a number behind the mic in Paris – many of them former athletes – whodidn’t approach the job as a journalistic one.
The result was an approach to mixed-zone interviews that felt not only manipulative but positively vampiric. We should be learning to lean away from the overcooked questions about how much it all means, the endless prodding about “tough times” they’ve been through. They all feel designed to trigger tears for a viral clip, and as exploitative as anything in a reality show.
Sport provides enough highs, lows and natural emotion to create any amount of content without such obvious and desperate tactics. There was nothing more moving than watching pommel horse gold medallist Rhys McClenaghan silently and successfully fighting to hold in the tears as he watched the Irish tricolour being raised. No commentary was needed, none was given.
If anything, the vital lesson from this year’s Olympics was how Gen Z’s more enlightened attitudes are allowing sportspeople to find perspective. Witness Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix and Emma Finucane both expressing genuine delight at their bronze medals. Or Simone Biles’s response after an NFL player criticised her for bowing to Rebeca Andrade on the podium. The most decorated gymnast in history actually said “we don’t care whether we win or lose,” which is an astonishing comment, yet relatively unremarked upon. It was the macho American footballer who was found to be out of step with the public mood.
A new generation is manifesting entirely new ways of competing in sport, and it’s pretty joyous to watch. Hopefully the same can become true of the way we cover it. Not all sporting legacies need to be about the number of people taking up jogging, or how many handball courts get built. You may be able to measure success against childhood obesity levels, but it’s harder to create a gauge for kindness, or patience, or solidarity.
And yet, the Paralympics has already created one tangible legacy. When coverage begins on Wednesday, 200 of the production staff will be working from a new state-of-the-art facility in Wales built specifically with the Games in mind.
The Cymru Broadcast Centre is one of the most accessible production hubs in Europe, and its features will benefit more than a dozen of the trainees with disabilities who have come through C4’s Paralympics apprenticeship scheme.
More disabled people will gain experience there in the months to come through new entry-level schemes. The joint project – between Whisper, C4, and Welsh government agencies – feels like something worth celebrating. As Biles would say: you have to give them their flowers.
