The Fake Paralympians: 2. Caught
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 24 August 2021
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A basketball journalist in Spain recognises three of the players in the gold-medal-winning intellectual disability basketball team - and they are not disabled. He has even played on the same team as one of them. But when he publishes his story in a national basketball magazine, the team’s organisers show certificates supposedly proving the players’ disability status. The denials continue until another of the players - who turns out to have been a journalist - publishes his own article exposing the fraud.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Dan Pepper. I'm an ex-Parlempic swimmer from the northwest of England. |
| 0:07.0 | At the prime of my swimming career, as a world champion in multiple events, but this coincided with the total ban on my category |
| 0:16.5 | at the Paralympics. I have an intellectual disability. at Sydney 2000, 2000, so I missed out on my best chance to win a Paralympic medal. |
| 0:35.9 | It's fair to say that the scandal ruined my swimming career. |
| 0:50.0 | Even at the Tokyo Games that aren't as many medals in my category as there were 21 years ago. In the fake Paralympians I'm finding out exactly what happened and why it left so it's a devastating |
| 0:59.1 | legacy for learning disability sport. |
| 1:05.0 | Previously. |
| 1:09.0 | When I went to Sydney, I thought was a dream. You think you're never going to get there. |
| 1:11.0 | When you're there, you need some seconds to understand you know I'm really here I did it |
| 1:17.8 | I am doing it. I made it. I made it. I actually saw him there get his gold medal on that moment was just amazing. |
| 1:30.0 | I thought oh my God he's done it you know this this is the highlight of his life. |
| 1:35.0 | This is the fake Paralympians from the BBC World Service. |
| 1:42.0 | Episode 2, Court. |
| 1:49.0 | So when you arrived back to Spain what happened next? Well my family was there with a lot of |
| 1:57.2 | people going crazy I loved that bit and from there you can see that the other people was doing different stuff like putting |
| 2:09.8 | glasses you know some classes their. They hide their identity. |
| 2:14.0 | I didn't know why you were doing that. |
| 2:16.0 | That was the turning point. |
| 2:18.0 | That was horrific. |
| 2:20.0 | I think looking back on that, it's,'s you know I still can't believe it |
| 2:24.8 | I still can't believe it happened I'm chatting with Ramon Torres or Ray to his |
| 2:30.4 | friends and his sister. Ray was the captain of Spain's intellectual disability basketball team of the |
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