Final Preparations

With the opening ceremony taking place tomorrow we are almost there as you can tell from the build-up in media interest. Great work from our new marketing partner TLA in getting wheelchair rugby and our athletes at the forefront of the early Games coverage with full-page articles in the ‘Daily Mirror’ and ‘The Sunday Times’. I appreciate we would all like to see more on the sport itself rather than the human stories but in reality whether sport, politics, or anything else in the news it ...
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Saturday in the Paralympic Village

I caught up with coaches Paul Shaw and Darren Mathews this morning with a FaceTime call from their hotel room in the village. Both were very upbeat and with the good news that the team are all fit and well and rested after their travels. Saturday morning was a further period of recovery and physio followed by the final session in the training venue – from tomorrow the team get into the Yoyogi Stadium which is the venue for the competition and a practice game with Denmark. With classification a...
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Nicely settled…

Staff and athletes are now settled into the village. After a bit of a push around to get used to their new surroundings and a night’s sleep it was up at 6am to prepare for a visit by the anti-doping testing team – not quite in line with our jet-lag recovery strategy but all part of the Games. In addition, staff and athletes have started the daily saliva testing and health reporting which are all part of the safety measures. After this a relatively chilled morning with physio sessions and res...
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Team Arrives in Tokyo

Just seven days to go before Australia and Denmark open the wheelchair rugby tournament at the Yoyogi National Stadium in Tokyo with our game against Canada following a few hours later… after what seems an eternity the Games are almost upon us. The team left Heathrow yesterday afternoon and I had confirmation of their safe arrival in the early hours of this morning. They are now settling into the Paralympic village before their first training session on Friday afternoon. We will use the websit...
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Return to Play: Updates

The Government has announced that most legal restrictions will be lifted from Monday 19 July but stresses that we are still in the third wave of the pandemic and there remains a risk you could catch or pass on the virus, even if you are fully vaccinated. It is therefore necessary for us all to continue to exercise caution and maintain many of the safety measures we have put in place as part of our Return to Play (RTP) protocols. Clubs in England As of the 19th ...
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Now for the Paralympics!

Yesterday the flame was extinguished on the delayed Tokyo summer Olympics and despite all of the challenges, concerns, and the controversy as to whether it should or should not have taken place in the midst of a global pandemic, who could argue that it was anything other than a huge success? Sport again showed that it can be a powerful catalyst for uniting peoples across the world, and as the IOC President said in his closing speech, ‘giving us hope and faith’. There have been some extraordi...
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