BRONZE IS THE NEW GOLD!
MY post this week starts with some amazing news — my client and friend Chris Hunt Skelley MBE, one of the world’s leading judoka, has just won a bronze medal at the Paralympics in Paris.
In doing so he’s written his name into the history of sport — winning two medals at two consecutive global Paralympics in two different weight categories. He won gold at Tokyo 2020, his weight category was subsequently scrapped and this time he found himself competing with the ‘heavy weights’.
What most people will not know is the highs and extreme lows, this humble young man has been through over the last couple of years to even to get to Paris. As a visually impaired person, Chris didn’t even know if he could compete at all. Over the last year (not for the first time) he had to ‘prove’ the degree of his visual impairment yet again as those who determine classification at different tournaments questioned him. At the time if felt like Chris had to justify his own level of disability.
Given that as a teenager, for a long while, Chris was not believed when he complained he couldn’t see — and it took a long time to even get a diagnosis, this whole experience took him right back to a very low point in his life. A time when he had to accept blindness as his peers were starting out in their careers. His own dream was to be mechanic and that dream was soon in tatters. It was…
