Few men understand disability sport like Roy Smith MBE. He says himself that he remembers when the Paralympics was shown only at Christmas time and for ‘around 10 seconds with no results’ and he’s attended stadiums with more security than fans.
So no-one was more content to see the London 2012 Paralympics go off with such a bang in what, so-far, has to be the proudest year in disability sport for the UK. Roy said: “It was fantastic to see stadiums full with people cheering on the athletes the way they did was incredible”.
Roy is a charming character who, aged just 21, began to lose his sight when he developed a rare hereditary eye condition, Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy. A talented high jumper he competed at the Paralympics in Arnhem 1980. Since retiring from sport Roy has arranged competitive events around the UK and Europe and has raised over £1million for charity, in 1991 Roy was awarded an MBE for his services to sport.
He is now chairman for the Metropolitan sports club for the blind and visually impaired. Based in and around London the club caters for those who want to compete or for those that are new to sport and want to enjoy less competitive activities.
When asked if he thought interest had increased in the club since the success of the Paralympics Roy’s answer was clear: “definitely, we’ve definitely seen a lot more enquiries and it is so encouraging to see more people want to get involved it’s great to see, 2012 can really freshen up disability sport”
The ‘Metro’ sports club will be turning 40 next year and Roy has been the chairman now for 20 years. The club has come a long way since its formation in 1973 in-line with attitudes towards disability sport. The club was originally founded after a group of visually impaired friends decided country walks and chess wasn’t enough to satisfy their competitive nature.
We all fell in love with the Paralympics and switched onto new and interesting sports at the time, but will the Paralympics’ finest year inspire us to continue watching the games we enjoyed in the summer? Roy Said:” Well that remains to be seen if people stay interested, I really hope they do and the club has invested almost £10,000 on our website to try to attract more visitor. We’re currently getting 600 new hits a month. We’re doing our best to try and move forward visually impaired sport and we need to encourage participation firstly.”
The club totally relies on the generosity of the public and this doesn’t look like it will change anytime soon. Roy explains: “We have no government funding and I would think there would be no chance of us getting it, but we do have good support”
Government funding is centred on investment into elite sportsmen and women, and not community clubs like the ‘Metro’ which try to be inclusive to wider society. He added:” A lot of money goes to elite athletes but maybe the government should think about putting more money into grass-roots sport to get more children involved. This way more children can play and we’ll have a larger pool of talent to choose from”
Whilst our elite Para-Olympians will put on a great show at Rio 2016 the future beyond 2016 rests with grass-roots development and the inclusion of more and more children. Established clubs like the ‘Metro’ specialise in getting more children involved and there is a strong case for well-run clubs to receive a small portion of this funding.
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