Paralympic Legend Tim Reddish On The Delayed 2020 Games; Who Were Japan's Goze Performers?

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IN TOUCH – Paralympics

TX: 08.09.20 2040-2100

PRESENTER: PETER WHITE

PRODUCER: MIKE YOUNG

White

Good evening. Tonight, a touch of Eastern promise, although not all, as yet, fulfilled. We hear about the Tokyo Paralympics that should have been. And also:

Clip

My name’s Tucket. I have dark hair tied up in the traditional Japanese way and I am wearing a purple flowered kimono with a gold obi sash and carrying a wooden long cane.

White

The Japanese tradition of the goze, blind women who, for centuries, worked as travelling performers.

But first, every four years I normally know exactly where I’m going to be in early September – covering the Paralympic Games – and specifically how are our visually impaired hopefuls are getting on. But, of course, this year, they’ve fallen yet another victim of Covid-19, delayed for at least another 12 months. Well, I’m sure you can spare your sympathy for me but what about the athletes who had dedicated their lives to be in peak condition for this one moment in time? What will all this mean for them?

Tim Reddish is a former Paralympic swimmer with a clutch of medals from the 1992, 1996 and 2000 Games. I was there and saw him win a few of them. He’s been National Performance Director for the GB disability swimming team and he’s chaired the British Paralympic Association. He’s currently an international Paralympic Committee governing board member. So, who better to ask about how tough it’s been on the athletes who’ve lost out on the chance to compete this summer?

Reddish

I think, at first, it was a huge shock for a lot of the athletes because you don’t just turn up at the Games and then get on with it, it’s a cycle and as you rightly said, every four years it happens. So, for example, when I was preparing as an athlete and a lot of these athletes that were preparing would have started their preparations four years out and then, depending on your sport, because of technical aspects, you might do new technical stuff in year one. So, you come to year four at a peak and then all of a sudden year four is no longer year four anymore, it’s year three plus. And then year four becomes year five. So, from that point of view it was a major shock for a lot of them.

White

And what effect does that have on you? I mean you’ve been a successful swimmer, you’ve been a coach, you’ve been a performance director – just explain this business of peaking at the right time and how difficult it is to recreate, as some will have to do.

Reddish

The biggest challenge now will be where you look to get back what you’ve missed because – because of Covid, athletes from all around the world have sort of been in lockdown, so they’ve not been able to train. Yes, they’ve been able to maintain some fitness but there are some sports that have that sport specificity. For example, you cannot replicate what you do in the swimming pool, yeah, there’s all sorts of gadgets out there to help you but feeling the water, you cannot replicate that. So, what they’re going to look to do is, the coaches will sit down and be scratching your heads and then giving the athletes the confidence, to say – look guys, we’ve got you to here, you wasn’t quite peaked yet, we’ll get back to where you was, so, this winter – and that’s the key, is going to be vital for a lot of our athletes, for those endurance athletes to get a block of winter training in.

White

But I suppose it’s not just about physical condition is it, I imagine it’s about your mental condition. You know, people would have been psyched up for this date, you know…

Reddish

Oh yeah.

White

…and now they’ve got to kind of reprogramme themselves presumably?

Reddish

Yes, my philosophy is everything that you do is 95% psychological. This is the key now, is for some athletes they’re actually quite relieved because some of them were carrying injuries or may have had to have operations and weren’t quite sure whether they were ready, so they’ve got another year. Some athletes have already been selected, some athletes have still got to qualify. So, psychologically there’s a lot of work to do there. But the one good thing about Paralympians and Paralympic athletes is that they’re good at adapting, we have to do it everyday of our lives, so we’re good at that. I think once they get back to some resemblance of good continuous training, they’ll be fine.

White

You’ve picked up a point I was going to raise because when you say when we have to be good at adapting, you mean visually impaired people. And I was wondering whether there are any elements to this which applies specifically to visually impaired athletes. Because what we’d normally say, is we’re exactly the same as everyone else but actually, the truth, we’re not exactly the same as everyone else are we?

Reddish

No, and some of us, visually impaired and blind people, are pretty good at visualisation because that’s part of our everyday life. And also we’re good at failing and when I say failing you and me have both, and I’m sure some of our listeners out there, have set out on a journey and we’ve failed miserably and then we’ve just had to adapt, get our head around it and move on. So, I think that’s where a lot of visually impaired and blind athletes – I wouldn’t say they’ll have an edge but they adapt well to psychological change and adaptation as we go through.

White

So, if you were still training what would you be saying to your athletes – your visually impaired athletes in particular – at this moment?

Reddish

All I’d say is let’s do what we can in regards to your physical fitness, in regards to what we can do from a land conditioning point of view. If we’re back in the water let’s get some good technique in and get that feel back for the water, let’s not worry about the end product yet, let’s worry about all the processes. And psychologically I’d be saying – look guys, yes it’s another year away but just think what we can do in this year. Those little things that we said we wish we could have done, we can now do.

White

But I guess and I imagine you wouldn’t say this to anyone but the truth of the matter is for some people the moment might have passed mightn’t it?

Reddish

If this was at the end of my career it could be one year too much. If I, for example, the swimming programme, they would not have qualified yet, so if there’s somebody there that’s hanging on by the skin of their teeth or 100th of a second from qualifying this could be a real angst year for them. Whereas those youngsters coming through, snapping at your heels, they don’t half get progression quite quickly, the youngsters do, through maturation.

White

So, they might be rubbing their hands, although trying to conceal the fact?

Reddish

Correct, correct.

White

What sort of an organisational nightmare comes with delaying a Paralympic Games for a year?

Reddish

Obviously, I can’t speak for the BPA but I can obviously speak about the things that they will be going through because it’s the same as the International Paralympic Committee. What we’re going through and gone through is that you have an enormous lot of contracts in place between now and the Games and those contracts will be linked to the Games being delivered in 2020. So, you’ve then got to look at all these different contracts. Insurance, for example, the insurance could change or they might say – yes, we’ll extend it for another year but we’re going to whack the price up now. So, there’s huge amount of contract negotiations to go through, whether that be temporary staffing because you would have brought staff in temporarily six months prior to the Games and have them through the Games and six months afterwards, so do you lay them off and bring them back on? It becomes a lawyer’s festival of earning money I’m afraid.

White

And of course, one of the things that Tokyo will have had to have done is produce a village, which is accessible for the Paralympic athletes – can they use what they’ve already got?

Reddish

Well this is the interesting one because normally what happens is at a Games you normally get, for example in London, the whole of East End of London was redeveloped and in Rio they had redevelopment, so as soon as the Games finished there are a number of apartments and houses – some for social housing, some for people to go and purchase – normally they’re sold within two or three months after the Games because the developers need the money. So, now, Tokyo are frantically looking at how do we manage this to make sure that we’ve got sufficient accommodation for the Games.

White

In spite of all that the rise of the Paralympics from a sports day at Stoke Mandeville in 1948 to what it is now, a major sporting event, is pretty incredible and there’s a film just out isn’t there, to be released, I think, on Netflix, which celebrates that and you’ve got a bit of a connection with it.

Reddish

There’s a good friend of mine and colleague, called Greg Nugent, who’s the producer. He worked on London 2012, for the organising committee, he was the brains behind a lot of – the national Paralympic day that we had in Trafalgar Square, the flame lighting ceremony – and he said – Tim, we need to tell the story about the Paralympic Movement better. So, he’s gone away and invested his own money and got some great people together. And there’s this documentary moving from the humble beginnings and the impact of London and Rio, how Rio almost didn’t happen – the Paralympic Games – because of finances and it’s telling some stories of some unbelievable athletes. This is the third largest sporting event in the world behind the Olympic Games and obviously the FIFA World Cup. And we have an opportunity as a Paralympic Movement to change people’s perceptions. We can’t fix everything at the Paralympic Movement through sport but what we can do is effect change through sport.

White

So, I take it you would say – Paralympics – they’ll survive this setback?

Reddish

I think we’re better at surviving than most because we’ve had to from day one, if you look at those humble roots from 1948. We will not collapse; we’ll learn from it and we’ll thrive.

White

So, on a scale of one to 10, do you think and maybe me, but more importantly the athletes, will be in Tokyo this time next year?

Reddish

I’m actually confident at the moment. I cannot change nature, e.g. the Covid environment, but other than that it’s a 10 out of 10.

White

Tim Reddish from the International Paralympic Committee.

Well thanks for all your emails responding to items that we’ve covered in earlier programmes. Chris Kennet’s got in touch from Dunstable about concerns over drug shortages when the Brexit transition ends in December. Chris says that even before Brexit there have been recurrent shortages of his glaucoma medication – iopidine – over the past few years.

And Linda Dixon has also emailed on a glaucoma issue. She says: “I’ve been prescribed monopost which I have administered for years, however, when I saw my consultant recently, he advised me that there is a new treatment available privately which would mean eye drops would no longer be necessary. It’s a laser procedure called a Micropulse transscleral cyclophotocoagulation…” easier to take than say, I hope. Linda says: “I’m seriously considering this alternative despite the cost involved, as I, too, am concerned for my sight.”

Well thanks Linda and Chris, we will follow up on these developments in the weeks ahead.

Now continuing with our Japanese theme. The Extant Theatre Company of visually impaired artists has developed productions both on stage and online focusing on the goze. Now I must say this name was new to me but for hundreds of years the goze were blind female travelling performers in Japan with their own traditions and lifestyle.

Maria Oshodi, the artistic director of Extant, has been telling me about them and about her online production representing their way of life.

Oshodi

When they originated, which was back in the 16th and 17th century, there was very little in the way of employment for visually impaired and blind and partially sighted people. And so, the two strands of work, I suppose, that sort of developed were around music and storytelling and also around some of the therapies like acupuncture, massage and something called moxa, which is a sort of burning of leaves somewhere sort of near the meridian points in the body. And it’s developed around, for visually impaired people, that these were really good occupations. Originally there were the traditions of male blind musicians and sort of therapists that evolved even earlier, I think in the 10th and 12th century – they were called the biwa hōshi – they kind of developed out of the temples in Japan. And for a long time, they dominated employment and art for visually impaired people until the female tradition sort of emerged a few centuries on.

White

But effectively, they were wandering players, weren’t they?

Oshodi

Absolutely. I mean they would travel the very hostile terrain, sometimes, of the rural Japanese countryside, moving from village to village playing for the villagers who would very, very seldom leave their villages in Japan. And so, these travelling groups of female visually impaired artists would be a way of them not only being entertained but also gathering knowledge, because the travellers would be picking up bits of information from each village and sharing that information as they travelled. They sort of incorporated what they picked up from the natural environment into their songs and into their music as well. And they would traditionally carry something called a shamisen instrument, which they played, which is a three stringed instrument, a bit like a mandolin and this they would strike and they would narrate stories of legends and the local history.

White

Do we know how the goze lived Maria, you know, I mean did they get paid?

Oshodi

Yeah, well they certainly got some money, they also got put up by the villagers and the landlords of dwellings in these villages. It was very much a privilege for the goze to arrive at a village but also it was an obligation for the landlords to house them. But in their training, it was very interesting, in order to become a gozen you trained for five years under a mistress who took control of your learning of the shamisen, it was very strict and they had a lot of rules around apparently no relationships at all. Towards the end of the five year training they then appeared at a festival of other gozen, which they were judged and if they were deemed to pass then they were allowed to then go out on the road and they would travel then in this little bands of three to five visually impaired groups.

White

But you say it was strict – no relationships – so they weren’t allowed, if they tried to hook up with a man or a man tried to hook up with them, they got thrown out, didn’t they?

Oshodi

Or their training would have to begin again from year one, so in some cases, you know, it took them many years to eventually pass and actually get out on the road and earn a living.

White

And who were the women who became the goze, I mean how did you get into it and do we know how they lost their sight, were there other things which entitled you to become one?

Oshodi

I think it was based on some level of skill and obviously it was deemed at the very beginning whether you had the talent to become an artist or you had your skills laying in other areas, like, for instance, the therapies. It seemed to be, before the advent of any welfare state or education, a respectable and safe and protected way for visually impaired people to enter a sort of long-term training and a way of earning a living for the rest of their lives. And we know that the last goze died in 2005 and now the tradition’s completely died but for a long time, right until the 20th century, there were gozes that were travelling and earning their living in this way.

White

Now tell me a bit more about your production because you did tour, I think, a stage production last year called Flight Paths that focused on the goze, so how did you go about creating that and what will people see?

Oshodi

Well last year we toured a physical show obviously and that was an amazing piece, it actually took us five years to develop, so that’s an interesting correlation there. That show we aimed to integrate the stories of contemporary visually impaired artists who have travelled around the world and landed up in the UK and found this a very beneficial place to stay and to sort of practice as artists but also the difficulties that they experience. And then we kind of used the framework of the goze, gave the history of the goze and information about the goze within the productions and the contemporary stories of visually impaired people included two blind aerialists and a Japanese viola player and a Nigerian soprano who were both visually impaired. So, what we’ve done now – I mean we got this commission from The Space to create Flight Paths for a digital platform way before coronavirus and lockdown but fortunate for us the making of this digital experience coincided with lockdown, so we’ve been able to work on that steadily throughout and now just launched the repurposed, I suppose, material that we created, the live performance, but within this digital platform. And it’s fantastic. We use binaural sound, so if you wear headphones you actually feel that you’re in the theatre itself. And we have a fantastic animated goze character that takes you through the whole journey and there’s a sort of inactive element as well, so you can actually navigate your own journey through the Flight Paths story.

White

That’s Maria Oshodi, she’s artistic direction of Extant. And there’s a link to that digital version of Flight Paths on our own website.

And I know Maria is planning some socially distanced outdoor performances of the stage play itself in the New Year.

And that’s it for tonight. Do let us have your comments on anything that struck you in the programme. You can email [email protected] or you can go to our website – bbc.co.uk/intouch. You can download tonight’s and previous programmes from there.

From me, Peter White, producer Mike Young and studio managers Mike Smith and Celia Hutchison. Goodbye.