Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson and Ade Adepitan share their support for Seb Coe

As part of the build up to the IOC election this week, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson and Ade Adepitan shared their own personal stories of the London 2012 Paralympics and why are supporting me in this campaign.

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Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson

They billed it as Thriller Thursday and as she left the Olympic Stadium nobody needed to tell Tanni Grey-Thompson why.

The British legend had watched wheelchair duo Hannah Cockcroft and David Weir push to London 2012 gold before teen sprinter Jonnie Peacock raced to 100 metres glory as the clock struck 10pm.

An 80,000 sell-out crowd chanted the 19-year old’s name before and after. And just when Grey-Thompson thought the night could not possibly get any better she got into conversation with a mother and young daughter.

“She was a seven-year old and a double leg amputee,” recalls the 11-time Paralympic champion. “I asked had she enjoyed herself and her mum asked if she could tell me a story.

“Her daughter, she said, had had both legs amputated and before the Games would rather sit in a pram than her wheelchair because she didn’t like how she was treated when she was seated in a chair.

“Mum explained that she’d rather be thought of as a baby in a pram. That way she could be covered up and wouldn’t show anybody her legs.

“Anyway, after watching the first few days of the athletics on television this little girl asked her mum to buy her a pair of shorts. Why? So people could see her prosthetics.

“And here she was, walking out of the stadium. I told her mum the station was quite a long way. She smiled. ‘She’s never walked like this before,’ she said. ‘It doesn't matter how long it takes, we're going to walk’.”

Here, in one story, is what the London 2012 Paralympics achieved. That little girl watched Peacock win and it was absolutely life changing. “She didn’t see disability,” says Grey-Thompson. “Just an amazing athlete.”

These were the Games that Sebastian Coe, chairman of the London Organising Committee, insisted must be treated as equal partners with the Olympics. That had not happened before. It had a transformative effect.

Grey-Thompson recalls being part of the bid team back in 2005, sitting next to Coe in that room in Singapore the night the announcement was made, “not being able to pick up my glass of water because my hands were shaking that much”.

“We'd had a lot of debate around where the Paralympics would sit within the bid,” she said. “At the time London was only bidding for the Olympics, the Paralympics was a separate negotiation. But right from the beginning, Seb made it so that the Paralympics was part of it.

“From the very start it felt the Paralympics were an integral part of it. It was mentioned in every discussion: about village, about transport, about venue. There was no ‘we'll get through the Olympics and figure out what we're going to do with the Paras afterwards’.”

The London Paralympics broke all records, with 2.7 million spectators packing every venue, generating more than £54 million in ticket sales. “Being asked to play at the Paralympic closing ceremony in our home town is a huge honour,” Coldplay said. “We can’t actually imagine a bigger honour.”

That same evening Coe rose to his feet and told of “incredible people” performing “feats we hardly thought possible”. Bringing the curtain down on the Games he added: “Our minds were opened to what people can do, to what they can achieve by sheer talent and determination.”

It is a significant understatement to say there remains room for progress when it comes to disability awareness and provisions in society. Yet what Coe did for the Paralympic movement that golden summer was extraordinary.

“He drove everything,” says Grey-Thompson. “Seb is a leader, but he’s not afraid to put really good people around him. He doesn't need to be the smartest person in the room.

“That's true leadership, because the leaders who want to be the smartest person in the room will never get the best out of people around them.”

Grey-Thompson adds: “It’s easy to forget now that at the point Seb stepped in to become Chair we were by no means guaranteed of winning. At that time everyone was saying, ’It's Paris’ turn’. It was like, ‘Don't bother, Paris is going to win, Paris has bid before, it’s their turn’.

“When you’re constantly being told not to bother that can filter down through the team, but Seb kept everyone's spirits up.

“I remember one person saying to me, ‘We're not going to win because Paris is. And even if we do we won't build it, because we're rubbish at building stuff. And even if we do build it, no-one will buy tickets. And even if anybody does, it's going to rain!’

“Seb kept the belief and when London won and both the Olympics and Paralympics were amazing, that same person said to me: ‘I knew, it, I knew they were going be amazing’.

“I was like, did you really? Did. You. Really?!”

Her experience of working alongside Coe convinces Grey-Thompson that he is the candidate she wants to become 10th president of the International Olympic Committee.

“The future of the Olympics impacts the future of the Paralympics,” she says.  “And for me, and a lot of other Paralympians I know, the fact Seb gets the Paralympics is unbelievably important for us, for our future.”

With that, her mind drifts back to Thriller Thursday and the email she received on arrival home.

“This kid wrote to me to say he’d seen Jonnie run and wanted to be a Paralympian,” she recalled. “He said his mum had said they couldn't afford a prosthetic for him to run, so he couldn't have one. Could I help?

“Fortunately, I read it quite late at night because I was ready, there and then, to phone around all prosthetic companies and find him a leg.

“It was only the next morning when I re-read his message that the reason his mum said he couldn't have a prosthetic became clear. He wasn't a leg amputee! He was a boy who had looked at Jonnie and was like, ‘That is the coolest thing ever’.

“So, yes, lives were changed by the London Paralympics. We now have a generation of athletes competing who saw 2012 and thought, ‘I want that to be me’. That is a great legacy.”

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Ade Adepitain

Ade Adepitan has praised Sebastian Coe for revealing the “world’s best kept secret” and said it is vital for disability causes that he becomes the next president of the International Olympic Committee.

The wheelchair basketball star turned television presenter has become a familiar face on screens in the UK since fronting the London 2012 Paralympics for Channel 4.

He is in no doubt that those Games transformed the landscape not only for Paralympians but the wider disability movement and that the person to thank, primarily, is Lord Coe.

“I grew up in Stratford, East London,” he said. “The places where the Olympic Stadium and other arenas were built were wastelands I used to push around in my wheelchair, kicking the dirt.

“Up until 2012 I thought I was in this forgotten part of the world, playing this sport that no-one cared about. All of a sudden London won the vote and it was, literally, pinch yourself time.”

As Chairman of the London Organising Committee, Coe insisted the Paralympics be given equal standing to the Olympics. What came as a result caused a marked change in the way disability was viewed.

“It was heartwarming, in some respects, overwhelming,” recalled Adepitan. “Because for so many years you felt this massive frustration that you were part of the greatest secret out there in the world in terms of sport.

“The Paralympics was this incredible, awe-inspiring event, that had so much to offer the world and nobody knew about it. It was the world's best kept secret.

“Finally, somebody out there was saying, ‘This isn't going to be a secret anymore. This is time for everybody to see what you're about’. To have that affirmation, that respect, those eyeballs on us all, was a dream come true.

“We'd spent years screaming and shouting for this and it always felt we were bashing our heads against a brick wall. All of a sudden it did happen. And not only was it happening, it was happening on our own doorstep.”

Nobody is pretending those Games changed the world. As Adepitan puts it: “In terms of the wider disability community, things haven’t changed as much as they should have. And that's something I'm eternally frustrated with.

“What they did do, however, was create a platform - create a generation of disabled people who now have their own profile and platform.

“We've never had as many high-profile disabled people out there: people like Ellie Simmonds, David Weir, Hannah Cockroft, Sarah Storey, Jonnie Peacock.

“Without those people, there would not be Alex Brooker and Sophie Morgan, Chris McCausland, who has just won Strictly, Rose Ayling-Ellis, who won it the year before. These things wouldn't happen.”

Adepitan continued: “You're now seeing more and more disabled people; not enough, but far more than when I was growing up. And, absolutely, that hails from London 2012. What that summer did was make people see us who never saw us before.”

But, and there is a big but according to Adepitan, there is a growing cohort opposing diversity and inclusion which he feels has the potential to undo all the work of 2012 in the next few years.

“It’s something we have to be really wary of,” he said. “Which is why I think it’s vital to have Seb, such an impressive operator in both the sporting and political worlds, in a position of power to advocate for us.

“He is an embodiment and an example of what can be done when you give disability causes a platform. The 2012 Paralympics were testament to that.

“The trait of a good leader is someone who's able to see everyone and be confident enough in themselves to give a platform to others without worry or fear they may be overshadowed.

“Someone who has the ability to take risks and to completely commit to them because they know in their mind that it is right. Those are the sort of people that move the world forward.

“People who are able to look at things other people have discarded, other people have forgotten, and see gold.

“In the Paralympics Seb saw gold. He saw what other people didn't see. Or what other people saw as, I don't know, rubbish or not worthy, or were slightly uncomfortable or ashamed about.

“Seb had the vision to see gold in the Paralympics.”

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