Speaker 1: Welcome to Healthy Thank you tuning in listeners, Nice to
Speaker 1: have you. You are listening to the daily podcast from
Speaker 1: Body and Soul. I am Felicity Harley and it is
Speaker 1: Para Olympic time and to celebrate, I am joined by
Speaker 1: one of our most successful Paralympians, Jared Clifford. He's about
Speaker 1: to embark on his third Paralympics. He is already a
Speaker 1: three time Paralympic medalist, two times world champion Nike athlete.
Speaker 1: He's a vision impaired middle distance athlete, and today he
Speaker 1: is going to talk all about how his race rolls out,
Speaker 1: his excitement for Paris of course, and the lessons he's
Speaker 1: taking into his third Paraalympics. Make sure you listen in
Speaker 1: to our other sister podcast, Extra Healthy Ish as well,
Speaker 1: where he shares his full story and how he fell
Speaker 1: short of his dreams in Tokyo and how he's using
Speaker 1: that to inspire his races in Paris. Jared, thank you
Speaker 1: for joining us today on Healthy Is. How are you.
Speaker 1: How's it all going over there? Yeah?
Speaker 2: No, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: It's I'm really excited to have a chat, and yeah,
Speaker 3: it's been good.
Speaker 2: Coming over to Europe.
Speaker 3: Missing the Australian winter and training has been ramping up
Speaker 3: not long ago.
Speaker 2: Now it's all getting real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for rubbing that in For the rest of
Speaker 1: us who are who aren't having growth summer, How are
Speaker 1: you feeling about Paris? What are the nerves like are you?
Speaker 1: Are you getting there? Are getting excited?
Speaker 3: I'm overwhelmingly the emotion is excitement. It's nervous excitement for sure,
Speaker 3: but it's the kind of nerves that you can harness
Speaker 3: for you know, a good performance, Whereas I definitely have
Speaker 3: approached Paralympics in the past with a lot of nerves
Speaker 3: that might be cast as a burden. So I'm just
Speaker 3: so excited to be able to have another opportunity to
Speaker 3: chase the dream. So, you know, I've kind of gone
Speaker 3: in with this mantra that when I stand on the
Speaker 3: start line, it's the any place in the world that
Speaker 3: I want to be in that moment, and so I'm
Speaker 3: really feeling like that's going to come true when I
Speaker 3: do stand on the line.
Speaker 2: So yeah, just overwhelmingly excited.
Speaker 1: Tell us a bit about your Paralympic event. What is
Speaker 1: it exactly?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm a Paralympic middle and long distance runner,
Speaker 3: so I compete in the fifth hundred meters in the
Speaker 3: five thousand meters predominantly. I did do the marathon a
Speaker 3: couple of years ago at the Paralympics, but that's been
Speaker 3: put on the back burner for this one.
Speaker 2: So we're just on the track.
Speaker 3: So I compete in the category that is T twelve
Speaker 3: slash thirteen. That means that I'm visually impaired, and I
Speaker 3: compete against other athletes that are visually impaired. Athletes that
Speaker 3: are totally blind to compete in a separate category against
Speaker 3: similarly impaired people, So at the Paralympics, we only compete
Speaker 3: against people of the same or similar disability, and so
Speaker 3: for me, that's visually impaired. So some of my competitors
Speaker 3: have tunnel vision where they can see quite far but
Speaker 3: not peripherally, and then I am someone that has I
Speaker 3: have poor central vision but good peripheral vision. So we
Speaker 3: get clumped together because we do have some good site
Speaker 3: and so yeah, that's kind of what makes me eligible
Speaker 3: for the Paralympics. And distance running, I find is one
Speaker 3: of the most freeing sports to do having a visual
Speaker 3: impairment because it's a one hundred meters straight followed by
Speaker 3: a one hundred meters event. Repeat it over and over,
Speaker 3: so it's not too bad.
Speaker 1: So because some of those events have people running with them,
Speaker 1: but you don't.
Speaker 3: Do you. Yeah, So my category has the option to
Speaker 3: use guide runners. So in the fifteen hundred meters, which
Speaker 3: is a lot faster and shorter than say the five k,
Speaker 3: I'll run that solo. But in the five thousand meters
Speaker 3: at these games, I'll be using two guide runners. They'll
Speaker 3: switch it halfway and we're connected by a fifteen centimeter tether,
Speaker 3: so we have to be in sync, almost like a
Speaker 3: three legged race, but connected at the hand.
Speaker 2: And so they will.
Speaker 3: Give me all the information that an everyday runner would receive.
Speaker 2: Just by looking.
Speaker 3: So they'll tell me things like what position I'm coming,
Speaker 3: laps to go splits, which athletes are in front of me,
Speaker 3: because that will dictate what tactics I do, the gap
Speaker 3: between athletes are on the track, and just making sure
Speaker 3: that I can get absolutely everything out of myself without
Speaker 3: needing to think about seeing to get around the track,
Speaker 3: and I get to run without any hesitancy or run
Speaker 3: without any fear into this hard to see space in
Speaker 3: front of me, and I can do that just going
Speaker 3: absolutely all out because I know that the guide next
Speaker 3: to me will have my back if I need.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you must have an incredible amount of trust in them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely trust.
Speaker 3: So the two guys like Tim Logan, who's been training
Speaker 3: with me since I was twelve and I'm twenty five now.
Speaker 3: So we've run I think we've calculated thirty to thirty
Speaker 3: five thousand kilometers together. He lives with me, he is,
Speaker 3: you know, we've spent a lot of time together, and.
Speaker 2: I definitely you know, when I cross the.
Speaker 3: Road and I'm running with him, I'm quite literally trusting
Speaker 3: you with my life when we do that. And so
Speaker 3: the other guide is Matt Clark. He's an Olympian and
Speaker 3: he'll be going to his second Olympics in the steeple chase,
Speaker 3: and so he's doubling back. He won't be celebrating too hard,
Speaker 3: too quickly because yeah, he'll be coming to the Paralympics
Speaker 3: as well. So you know, we're all best mates, all
Speaker 3: three of us. So it's just such a special thing
Speaker 3: that I get to do. You know, there's not many
Speaker 3: runners that get to, I guess stand on the start
Speaker 3: line with one of their best mates.
Speaker 2: But beyond the same team, I think it's really exciting.
Speaker 1: That's phenomenal. Now you've been to Rio in Beijing. Oh sorry, Tokyo.
Speaker 1: What learnings are you going to take from those Paralympics
Speaker 1: into Paris.
Speaker 2: There's so many different lessons, you know.
Speaker 3: I was seventeen when I went to Rio, and it
Speaker 3: was all about soaking up the atmosphere, learning as much
Speaker 3: as possible. I remember putting my foot down on the
Speaker 3: start line when we called to our marks, and you
Speaker 3: kind of put weight through that front leg before the
Speaker 3: gun goes, and I couldn't put any weight through it
Speaker 3: because it was shaking so much.
Speaker 2: That's how nervous I was, and.
Speaker 3: Never run in front of the crowd like that. All
Speaker 3: I could think about was, you know, what if I
Speaker 3: come last?
Speaker 2: What happens if I fall over? What are the kids
Speaker 2: at school got to say?
Speaker 3: Because I was still in like year eleven and I was,
Speaker 3: you know, thinking a lot about that and it was
Speaker 3: a great experience.
Speaker 2: But the lesson from that was that.
Speaker 3: I've got to think about the process, not the outcome,
Speaker 3: Like that's got to be how I think about things,
Speaker 3: because if you focus on the process, the outcome will
Speaker 3: sort itself out, So that was the big lesson from that,
Speaker 3: and then the big lesson from Tokyo. I went in
Speaker 3: his favorite in three events as either reigning wheel champion
Speaker 3: or world record holder, and I came away with two
Speaker 3: silvers and a bronze, which I was obviously super proud of,
Speaker 3: but did fall short of the dream that I'd held
Speaker 3: since I was a kid. So, you know, the lesson
Speaker 3: from that was that I needed to make sure I
Speaker 3: was enjoying the sport and not that I make sure
Speaker 3: the sport wasn't just a means to.
Speaker 2: An end, the end being the dream.
Speaker 3: I had to remember that I actually have this dream
Speaker 3: because I had fallen in love with the sport as
Speaker 3: a kid, So the falling in love with the sport
Speaker 3: had actually come before the dream, and so I guess
Speaker 3: it was just reminding myself of that and going back
Speaker 3: to the basics and why I loved it and making
Speaker 3: sure training wasn't just yeah, it means to an end,
Speaker 3: it was actually something that I enjoyed doing. So I
Speaker 3: think over the last three years, I've definitely done that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, we did well meet at the Nike Running Summit,
Speaker 1: and you gave an incredible answer to a question there
Speaker 1: about the Paralympics and the Olympics being one event. What's
Speaker 1: your view on this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's something we get asked quite a lot, particularly
Speaker 3: off the back of the Commonwath Games recently appearing to
Speaker 3: kind of synthesize the two events, which isn't quite true.
Speaker 3: The Commonwath Games have a tiny, tiny amount of power
Speaker 3: events and the Gold Coast twenty eighteen that wasn't actually
Speaker 3: a new thing. It was just that the medals counted
Speaker 3: to the metal tally for the first time.
Speaker 2: So I don't think they should be combined.
Speaker 3: I think that the Paralympics on its own is very
Speaker 3: important for sport, very important for the world because it
Speaker 3: is the only time where disability is front center for
Speaker 3: two weeks. Is it's not overshadowed by Yusain Bolt or
Speaker 3: Simone Biles.
Speaker 2: It is prime time just focus on disability.
Speaker 3: And because I think it's important because the Paralympics as
Speaker 3: a sporting spectacle also provides us a two week window
Speaker 3: into how the world should be for all people with disabilities.
Speaker 3: The Paralympics shows us what people disabilities can do when
Speaker 3: they're given the support and resources to excel.
Speaker 2: So if it shows it.
Speaker 3: If we were to give the support and resources to
Speaker 3: people's disabilities to excel in all aspects of life, all
Speaker 3: throughout society, not just the ones that love doing sport,
Speaker 3: then imagine what's possible. And if the Paralympics and the
Speaker 3: Olympics were combined, we would lose, we would lose that
Speaker 3: window that we get given into this kind of utopian
Speaker 3: world that I think does have a chance to exist.
Speaker 3: So I think it's very important that the Paralympics stays
Speaker 3: unique to itself. We have our own symbol, our own name,
Speaker 3: and yeah, it's just our chance to show the world
Speaker 3: what we can do.
Speaker 1: Well. Thank you for championing us at the Paralympics and.
Speaker 2: For coming on healthy, Thanks for having.
Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for listening to this chat with Jared, and yes,
Speaker 1: make sure you watch his races the Paralympics on now
Speaker 1: on Channel nine on nine. Now I know where I'll
Speaker 1: be glued to this weekend, and I hope you will
Speaker 1: be too. If you did enjoy this chat, rate and
Speaker 1: review it or of course subscribe to this podcast anything else,
Speaker 1: head to bodyansoul dot com dot you grab our print edition,
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Speaker 1: hopefully next time you listen, go Aussie and stay healthy.