Weekend Edition: Why are deaf athletes excluded from Paralympics? - The Sports Agents
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 31 October 2025
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Did you know the government doesn't fund deaf athletes, because they aren’t allowed to compete at the Paralympics?
For 100 years now they’ve been holding their own competition - the Deaflympics - where referee whistles are replaced by flag signals, and starting guns by flashing lights. But no Paralympics means no funding. All because they were born with the so-called “wrong” disability. Great Britain medal hopefuls Charlotte Gower and Nathan Young join Gabby.
Plus we look back at the best bits from this week on The Sports Agents from the NBA gambling scandal featuring the mafia and x-ray glasses with Andy Hughes (Co-Host of The Crime Agents podcast) and The Athletic's Mike Vorkunov; to a love letter to the Ashes with some hilarious stories from Phil Tufnell.
You can watch the Deaflympics live on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@TOKYO2025DEAFLYMPICS And find out more information about DeaflympicsGB here: https://www.deaflympicsgb2025.co.uk/
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Transcript
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| 0:25.3 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:29.6 | Did you know, death athletes aren't allowed to compete at the Paralympics? |
| 0:32.8 | For a hundred years now, they've been holding their own competition. |
| 0:36.5 | The Deaf Olympics, which starts in a couple of weeks' time, with over 3,000 competitors from around 80 countries. |
| 0:38.6 | Referee whistles are replaced by flag signals, starting guns by flashing lights. |
| 0:42.9 | But no Paralympics means no funding. So UK Deaf Sport went to Parliament to state their case. |
| 0:48.6 | We are the only disabled elite sports group that have no access to funding whatsoever. I think that's shameful, |
| 0:59.0 | speaking forthrightly. All because they were born with the so-called wrong disability. Welcome to the sports agents. The Sports Agents |
| 1:16.1 | With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman |
| 1:18.4 | So I've got with me |
| 1:21.7 | Two of Team GBE's medal hopefuls for the upcoming Deaf Olympics. |
| 1:26.6 | We've got Charlotte, who's 15 years old and going |
| 1:29.3 | to her first Deaf Olympics. Thanks for joining a Charlotte. Nice to see you. And Nathan as well, |
| 1:34.7 | who is a Deaf Olympics bronze medalist already, multiple British championship titles as well. |
| 1:39.7 | And he will be going for more medals at this Deaf Olympics. Thanks so much for coming in to chat about something that I, I'll be honest, I was quite ignorant about. |
| 1:48.0 | I hadn't kind of registered. |
| 1:50.0 | Yeah, not many people know much about it at all, no. |
| 1:53.0 | That Deaf Olympics was so separate to the Paralympics. |
| 1:56.0 | People presume that we have the category in the Paralympics or the Parasome, but we don't really, we're not involved in any of that at all. And so the Deaf Olympics is smaller than the Paralympics in terms of the number of events. Tell us a bit, Nathan, about what else goes on at the Deaf Olympics apart from swimming. So the Deaflympics have been around for over 100 years now. So it's been going along. So it predates the Paralympics. |
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