Ellie Cole is a bona fide Australian sporting champion, yet as other women athletes, sportspeople of color or minorities can attest, success is no shield sometimes.
“You know, six years ago, I was working at a place and I was told that I was a ‘diversity hire,’” she told reporters from a training camp in Cairns, Australia.
The star swimmer believes that the comment was made in jest, but she was disappointed.
Photo: Reuters
“I think that’s when I really started asking myself questions about what’s happening outside of the sporting space because, as a prolific athlete, I do live in a bit of a bubble,” she said. “What’s actually happening out there in the real world needs to be spoken about more.”
Yesterday, the International Paralympic Committee — along with dozens of other major organizations — launched “WeThe15,” which they hope to be the world’s largest human rights movement.
The “15” refers to the estimated 15 percent of people around the world who have a disability.
The lofty goal of the 10-year campaign, which is to be a key feature of the opening ceremony at the Tokyo Paralympics on Tuesday next week, is to “act as a global movement publicly campaigning for disability visibility, accessibility and inclusion.”
Organizers have said that the ceremony would embrace the inclusion agenda in an unashamed way that past Games have not.
When Cole was asked by the International Paralympic Committee to take part in the campaign, she thought of her parents.
“When they were told that I was going to have my leg amputated at three, their first response was that they felt this overwhelming sense of fear about what my future was going to be like,” Cole said. “They didn’t know anyone else who had a disability.”
As a child, Cole’s parents enrolled her in swimming to help with her rehabilitation. This week, at 29-years-old, she is to land in Tokyo for her fourth Paralympics.
Cole is the reigning champion in the 100m backstroke S9 and has 15 Paralympic medals to her name — six of them gold.
Cole first went to the Paralympics in Beijing aged 16. She recalls skipping math class to watch Libby Trickett win gold in the 100m butterfly in the Olympics.
The fact that she would be competing at an equivalent meet weeks later did not dawn on her.
Her sense of what the Paralympics are has changed since then — and so has the public’s.
Cole traces that shift in attitudes back to the 2012 London Paralympics, where she recalls seeing billboards depicting athletes with a disability as she toured the city.
“I was walking down the street, and I was with a friend of mine who had no arms and no legs,” she said. “So he was walking on two prosthetic legs. And another friend of mine who had no legs, and another woman who was short statured, and I was thinking like: ‘We are going to be a sight for sore eyes. It’s like a disability cocktail.’”
“We didn’t get like a second look in the streets of London. I couldn’t believe that,” Cole said. “I’d never been anywhere where that hasn’t happened before.”
This brings up WeThe15. Yes, things have changed and are changing, but there is much more to do.
Cole does not tell the story about being called a “diversity hire” to elicit pity. Her point is that companies should see there is genuine value to having a diverse workplace. It is not about tokenism.
“People need to just not look at someone with a disability as simply a diversity hire, but somebody who can create that conversation, who can provide a different voice,” she said. “You see low employment rates, because if [businesses] have one person as a ‘diversity hire,’ then businesses feel like they don’t need to employ anybody else.”
With many Australians in lockdown, the Paralympics are likely to take on new significance, as the Olympics did.
Cole has picked up on the unprecedented excitement.
“I was speaking to Cate Campbell on the phone yesterday and she said to me: ‘Ellie, so many people are looking forward to the Paralympics. It’s crazy,’” Cole said. “And I said to her: ‘This is unbelievable that people are talking about [it]. I think the Olympics gave people so much joy, but I think the Paralympics is just going to be that next level. The thing that I love is that it has an extra element. It’s elite sport, but also sharing incredible stories.”
“I think right now, a lot of people are going to need to hear those stories,” she said. “I think it’s going to bring a lot of joy for people.”
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