Adrian Derbyshire

Last updated

Adrian Derbyshire (born 1 July 1974) is a former British international wheelchair fencer, ambassador for anti bullying, stigma and hate crime for the United Kingdom and CEO of The Adrian Derbyshire Foundation.

He was a member of the Great Britain Fencing Squad, [1] and British National Wheelchair Sabre champion of 2010 and has won 2 gold and 3 silver domestic medals. [2]

Derbyshire was a 2012 Olympic torch-bearer. [3]

He retired from International competitions in 2013 following a shoulder injury which prevented him from competing in the London 2012 Paralympic games [4] and a burglary in early 2013 in which most of his fencing equipment was stolen and his sports wheelchair was badly damaged. [1] Derbyshire has featured on several television shows promoting wheelchair fencing, including 'That Paralympic Show' and is featured in an ITV advertisement.

Derbyshire was awarded the Wire FM Adult Courage of the Year award, Warrington Disabled Sport's Personality of the Year and Cheshire Disabled Sport's Personality of the Year award. In 2016, he received and Honorary Fellowship from Myerscough College for his outstanding Sporting achievements and significant charitable work. [5] Derbyshire is an ambassador for LGBT rights and Stop Hate UK.

During 2014 Derbyshire hand-pedalled his trike across the UK to promote awareness of hate crime, and was presented with a Points of Light award by Prime Minister David Cameron. [6] He is a supporter and promoter of disability rights and gay rights, and visits schools coaching children in fencing and talking about disabilities. [7]

Derbyshire became a wheelchair user in 2008 following a brain hemorrhage. Doctors consequently discovered a rare brain tumor when attempting to treat the hemorrhage. Derbyshire is determined to raise disability awareness throughout the world, despite being in pain. [ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fencing</span> Type of armed combat sport

Fencing is a combat sport that features sword fighting. The three disciplines of modern fencing are the foil, the épée, and the sabre ; each discipline uses a different kind of blade, which shares the same name, and employs its own rules. Most competitive fencers specialise in one discipline. The modern sport gained prominence near the end of the 19th century and is based on the traditional skill set of swordsmanship. The Italian school altered the historical European martial art of classical fencing, and the French school later refined that system. Scoring points in a fencing competition is done by making contact with an opponent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1984 Summer Paralympics</span> Multi-parasport event in New York City, US

The 1984 International Games for the Disabled, canonically the 1984 Summer Paralympics, were the seventh Paralympic Games to be held. There were two separate competitions: one in Stoke Mandeville, England, United Kingdom for wheelchair athletes with spinal cord injuries and the other at the Mitchel Athletic Complex and Hofstra University on Long Island, New York, United States for wheelchair and ambulatory athletes with cerebral palsy, amputees, and les autres [the others]. Stoke Mandeville had been the location of the Stoke Mandeville Games from 1948 onwards, seen as the precursors to the Paralympic Games, as the 9th International Stoke Mandeville Games in Rome in 1960 are now recognised as the first Summer Paralympics. As with the 1984 Summer Olympics, the Soviet Union and other communist countries except China, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia boycotted the Paralympic Games. The Soviet Union did not participate in the Paralympics at the time, arguing that they have no disabled people in the country. The USSR made its Paralympic debut in 1988, during Perestroika.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rick Hansen</span> Canadian track and field athlete

Richard Marvin Hansen is a Canadian track and field athlete, activist, and philanthropist for people with disabilities. Following a pickup truck crash at the age of 15, Hansen sustained a spinal cord injury and became a paraplegic. Hansen is most famous for his Man in Motion World Tour, in which he circled the globe in a wheelchair to raise funds for charity. He was inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 2006. He was one of the final torchbearers in the 1988 Winter Olympics and the 2010 Winter Olympics. He was profiled and spoke during the 2010 Winter Paralympics opening ceremony.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tanni Grey-Thompson</span> Welsh wheelchair racer and parliamentarian (born 1969)

Carys Davina Grey-Thompson, Baroness Grey-Thompson,, is a Welsh life peeress, television presenter and former wheelchair racer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ade Adepitan</span> British television presenter and sportsman

Adedoyin Olayiwola "Ade" Adepitan is a Nigerian-born British television presenter and wheelchair basketball player. As a presenter, he has hosted a range of travel documentaries and sports programmes for BBC television. Adepitan is a disability advocate and one of the first physically disabled television presenters in the UK, with a career of over 20 years.

WheelPower is the national organisation for wheelchair sports in the United Kingdom, and aims to help people with disabilities improve their quality of life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Summer Paralympic Games</span> International multi-sport event for disabled athletes

The Summer Paralympics, also known as the Games of the Paralympiad, are an international multi-sport event where athletes with physical disabilities compete. This includes athletes with mobility disabilities, amputations, blindness, and cerebral palsy. The Paralympic Games are held every four years, organized by the International Paralympic Committee. Medals are awarded in every event, with gold medals for first place, silver for second and bronze for third, a tradition that the Olympic Games started in 1904.

Fung Ying-ki is a Paralympic wheelchair fencer from Hong Kong, China. At the 2000 Summer Paralympics he won three gold medals in the men's individual foil, team foil, and individual sabre events and took bronze in team sabre. Four years later at the Athens Paralympics, he won two golds in individual foil and team sabre and a silver in team foil.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Steadward</span> Canadian sports administrator

Robert Daniel Steadward, is a Canadian retired sports administrator, professor, sports scientist, and author. Steadward helped organize the first Canadian wheelchair sport national championships in 1968, and later coached Canada in wheelchair basketball at the Summer Paralympics. He became a professor at the University of Alberta in 1971, later served as chairman of the Department of Athletics, and published more than 150 papers about disability sport. He was the founding president of the Alberta Wheelchair Sports Association in 1971, founded the Research and Training Centre for Athletes with Disabilities in 1978, served as president of the Canadian Paralympic Committee from 1984 to 1990, and later became a member of the Canadian Olympic Committee.

Disability hate crime is a form of hate crime involving the use of violence against people with disabilities. This is not only violence in a physical sense, but also includes other hostile acts, such as the repeated blocking of disabled access and verbal abuse. These hate crimes are associated with prejudice against a disability, or a denial of equal rights for disabled people. It is viewed politically as an extreme form of ableism, or disablism. This phenomenon can take many forms, from verbal abuse and intimidatory behaviour to vandalism, assault, or even murder. Although data are limited studies appear to show that verbal abuse and harassment are the most common. Disability hate crimes may take the form of one-off incidents, or may represent systematic abuse which continues over periods of weeks, months, or even years. Disabled parking places, wheelchair access areas and other facilities are frequently a locus for disability hate. Instead of seeing access areas as essential for equity, they are seen instead as 'special treatment', unjustifiable by status, and so a 'reason' for acting aggressively. Denial of access thus demonstrates a prejudice against equal rights for disabled people; such actions risk actual bodily harm as well as limiting personal freedom.

Disability sports classification is a system that allows for fair competition between people with different types of disabilities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Commonwealth Paraplegic Games</span>

The Commonwealth Paraplegic Games were an international, multi-sport event involving athletes with a disability from the Commonwealth countries. The event was sometimes referred to as the Paraplegic Empire Games and British Commonwealth Paraplegic Games. Athletes were generally those with spinal injuries or polio. The Games were an important milestone in the Paralympic sports movement as they began the decline of the Stoke Mandeville Games' dominating influence. The event was first held in 1962 and disestablished in 1974. The Games were held in the country hosting the Commonwealth Games for able-bodied athletes, a tradition eventually fully adopted by the larger Olympic and Paralympic movements.

Caz Walton OBE is a British retired wheelchair athlete and former Great Britain Paralympic team manager. She was a multi-disciplinary gold medallist who competed in numerous Paralympic Games. Between 1964 and 1976 she won medals in athletics, swimming, table tennis, and fencing. She took a break from the Paralympics, entering the basketball and fencing competitions in 1988. In total Walton won ten gold medals during her Paralympic career, making her one of the most successful British athletes of all time. Walton should also have been awarded gold in the 1968 Tel Aviv Women's Pentathlon incomplete but, due to a miscalculation of her total score which went unnoticed at the time, she was given third place and a bronze medal.

Carlos Soler Márquez is a Spanish wheelchair fencer who has represented Spain at five Paralympic Games. Following the 2012 Games, he retired from the sport. He is also a fencing administrator and coach, having organized a World Cup event at the fencing club where he is president.

Wheelchair sport classification is a system designed to allow fair competition between people of different disabilities, and minimize the impact of a person's specific disability on the outcome of a competition. Wheelchair sports is associated with spinal cord injuries, and includes a number of different types of disabilities including paraplegia, quadriplegia, muscular dystrophy, post-polio syndrome and spina bifida. The disability must meet minimal body function impairment requirements. Wheelchair sport and sport for people with spinal cord injuries is often based on the location of lesions on the spinal cord and their association with physical disability and functionality.

Piers Alexander Gilliver is a British wheelchair fencer, who competes in both épée and sabre. He is the 2020 Paralympic champion in the Individual Épée, A classification. He is the first British Paralympic champion in the sport since Carol Walton in 1988.

Mik Scarlet is a broadcaster, journalist, actor and musician, as well as an expert in the field of access and inclusion for disabled people. He has been voted one of the most influential disabled people in the UK, and was one of the first television presenters in the world with a physical disability.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zsuzsanna Krajnyák</span> Hungarian wheelchair fencer

Zsuzsanna Krajnyák is a Hungarian Paralympic wheelchair fencer. She has won 11 medals at the Paralympic Games, with the first two coming at the 2000 Summer Paralympics in Sydney, where she won two bronze medals. She has also won medals at European and World Championships. Krajnyák was nominated for the Laureus World Sports Award for Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability in 2006.

Rachel Mary Rosalind Hurst CBE is a British activist and former director of Disability Awareness in Action (DAA), an international network working on disability and human rights.

References

  1. 1 2 "Burglary puts top disabled athlete's career in doubt". The Guardian
  2. "Paralympic star to hand-cycle 1,000 miles to help fight hate crime". Warrington Borough Council.
  3. "Paralympic wheelchair fencer fears career is over after £30k worth of equipment stolen". Manchester Evening News.
  4. "A clash of steel in Sheffield" Archived 2014-01-07 at the Wayback Machine . Channel 4.
  5. "Honorary Fellows | Myerscough College". www.myerscough.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 2019-12-03. Retrieved 2019-07-01.
  6. "Disability charity champ praised by PM". Warrington Guardian.
  7. "Paralympian Adrian Derbyshire inspires children on the Isle of Man". BBC News.