The Fake Paralympians: 1. Gold
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 17 August 2021
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ex-Paralympic swimmer Dan Pepper investigates the cheats who won gold and left a devastating legacy for learning disability sport.
Ray Torres used to get beaten up every day at school. He stood out because he had a learning disability. But when his dad gave him a basketball, he found an escape and a kind of friend that didn’t hit him or call him names. He took the ball everywhere - even using it as a pillow.
When Spain started an intellectual disability basketball team, Ray was picked as one of the best players in the country and within a few years he was made captain. And when he found out the team had qualified to take part in the 2000 Paralympics in Sydney, it was beyond his wildest dreams…
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm going to take the job on to the floor 15% |
| 0:07.0 | My name's Dan Pepper. I'm a swim coach from Stopport which is in the northwest of England. |
| 0:19.2 | I'm also an ex-Palumpit swimmer who swam at the London 2012 Parlimpicks. |
| 0:27.4 | During my best years, before then, I would go to world championships, Europeans and win numerous medals, breaking world records, |
| 0:39.6 | basically in my prime events was kind of untouchable really but during that period my disability |
| 0:48.3 | category was banned from the Paralympics, so therefore I missed out on Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008. |
| 1:00.7 | In a nutshell, the ban destroyed my swimming career. |
| 1:11.0 | All I know about the band is that it happened just after the 2000 Sydney Paralympics. |
| 1:20.0 | It was the Spanish basketball team where the majority of them cheated. |
| 1:27.6 | Weren't disabled. |
| 1:28.8 | It's absolutely shocking that this cheating happened and more than 20 years later I've got so |
| 1:39.2 | many questions that I want answered. How did they do it? Why did they do it? How did they think they |
| 1:47.3 | would get away with cheating? And did they understand the impact that it would have on athletes like me that |
| 1:58.2 | legitimately wanted to compete at the Paralympic Games? And that's what this series is all about. |
| 2:05.0 | From the BBC World Service, this is The Fake Paralympians. |
| 2:17.0 | Episode 1, Gold. Before we get started on the story I wanted to tell you a bit more about my disability |
| 2:28.0 | and my producer Simon Mabin is here to help me get through some of the technical jargon and help me stay on track. |
| 2:40.0 | Yeah, so Dan, how would you usually describe your disability? |
| 2:43.2 | Well, I think that's the point I have to tell people about my disability |
| 2:48.0 | because it's not visual, you can't see it. |
| 2:50.0 | So I would describe it as intellectual learning difficulties. |
| 2:56.0 | Right, so that yeah that's the phrase you use a lot. |
... |
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