Deborah Poulton reflects on one year to go until the Paralympic Games

30 August 2011

With a year to go until the launch of the 2012 Paralympic Games, we caught up with Deborah Poulton, Channel 4's Sports editor, Paralympics, to find out more about the record-breaking amount of TV coverage that the games will receive.

There's a year to go until the London Paralympic Games. How are preparations going for the coverage on Channel 4?
We're very excited. When I began working on the Paralympic Games for Channel 4 we were about 900 days out from the games. It's weird to think that there's now one year to go. It feels really exciting and very palpable. Plans are going really well.

 

Channel 4 is already getting geared up for the games, isn't it?
Very much so. We've got International Paralympic Day on September 8th in Trafalgar Square, which is going to be a really good moment for us. We're going to have That Paralympic Show there filming, we've got Rick [Edwards], Ade [Adepitan] and Iwan [Thomas] actually hosting the day on behalf of LOCOG, and filming stuff for Channel 4. There will be lots of different features - we're going to have Boris and Seb taking each other on at a Paralympic sport. There'll be lots of fun stuff. We've even got the Channel 4 sitting volleyball team playing in the sitting volleyball competition. We're also hoping they'll help set a Guinness World Record for how many times a sitting volleyball team can keep the ball up in the air. And we'll have Channel 4 News there on the day, filming there as well. Channel 4 are also going to broadcast from Sainsbury's Super Saturday on Clapham Common, which is a festival of music celebrating Paralympic sport. We'll have T4 and 4Music there, as well as That Paralympic Show and lots of different Paralympic athletes. Channel 4 will be using its different genres to really amplify that there's just one year to go.

 

Is that something that we can look forward to when the games come around a year from now? Channel 4 programmes getting involved across the board, from music to news to entertainment shows?
Yes, absolutely. I hope that as we get closer to the games next year, we'll be looking to more and more of our existing shows and talent to get involved. Who's to say we can't have a Come Dine with Me with a Paralympic flavour, or Oscar Pistorius getting interviewed by Alan Carr on Chatty Man? We really want to utilise all of Channel 4's strengths to get behind what's going to be the biggest single event in Channel 4's history.

 

What can we expect from Channel 4's coverage of the games themselves?
Aside from there being more coverage than there's ever been broadcast before, there's going to be real in-depth analysis, and intelligent, thought-provoking commentary. Eighteen months into this job I've managed to watch a lot of Paralympic sport, and every time I watch, I have a host of questions I want to ask. So we need our analysis and commentary to address the questions that people will have when they watch, we need an intelligent analytical presence across the coverage. That will make our coverage feel quite distinctive and different from what's gone on in the past.

 

You mention there will be more coverage than ever before. How much is there going to be?
So much that you won't be able to move off your sofa! There'll be all-day, every-day coverage, from morning through to night. Paralympic Games events in the stadia don't complete until 10:30pm or 10:40pm most evenings. We'll be there, we'll be on it until it's over, and then a little bit more, to analyse what's happened that day. Then you'll wake up to it at breakfast time, it'll be there throughout the day. And if there's something that's not part of our coverage on TV, you can go on to our website and watch streams of various events that perhaps we're not broadcasting all of that day, not to mention other platforms that we've begun thinking about.

 

I know you're not going to unveil the presenting team just yet, but we can expect to see some new talent onscreen, can't we?
Yes, we've run a talent search that has unearthed some really interesting talent for us. For example, people who have competed in the Paralympic Games before, who really know their stuff, but have never been given the opportunity to broadcast before. With all of our coverage, we're going to be using a lot of presenting talent. We need approximately six presenters, eight reporters, 22 commentators, plus a number of pundits and lots of guests, so there's a huge volume of people to find. We'll be making announcements over the next few months about how that team is forming.

 

You've watched a lot of Paralympic sport over recent months and years - what events are you particularly excited about watching at the games?#
I love Paralympic swimming, because it's just all there, everybody's stripped bare, it's just very real. I love athletics, both able-bodied and Paralympic. I love wheelchair rugby because it's grunty and aggressive and it feels dangerous, and I love wheelchair basketball because I actually think it's more interesting than the able-bodied version. The rules are the same, so there's nothing particularly complicated to get your head around, it just feels faster. I love that.

 

What, for you, would constitute success, in terms of Channel 4's coverage of the Paralympic Games?
Our core ambition is to bring about a fundamental and permanent shift in people's perception of disability. That's the legacy that we want to leave behind. We feel that by sheer virtue of broadcasting so many hours of coverage, and by bringing these games up on a par with the Olympic Games, I'm hoping that we will see and feel a fundamental difference in people's awareness of disability and disability issues and disability sport. That, for me, would constitute success.

 

How do you think this country will embrace the Paralympic Games?
With gusto! I think the fact that these are home games is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for most people. I think LOCOG was very clever in dividing the coverage of the Olympics and the Paralympics separately, because they're going to be so huge, these games, such a monumental moment in most British people's lives, that it would have been impossible for one broadcaster to do them both justice. I think there will be a huge appetite for the Paralympics, I think people will still be swept up in the fever of the Olympics. They'll have a little bit of downtime in between - they'll need it, they'll rest and recharge, and I think they're going to come back really, really excited.