Interview: Kristin Duquette and Lacey Henderson on COVID and disability in sport

We've split our interviews off and they will publish on Thursdays as stand-alone episodes.

Jessica talks with Kristin Duquette, a disability advocate and former Team USA swimmer, and Lacey Henderson, a current Paralympian and host of the podcast Picked Last In Gym Class, about their own athletic journeys, disability in sports, and COVID-19.

This episode was produced by Martin Kessler. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist.

Update 23/08/21

This week, Burn It All Down is featuring conversations about the 2020/21 Tokyo Paralympic Games, which start Tuesday August 24. This episode is re-airing two interviews from September 2020, with updates at the end.

Jessica talks with Kristen Duquette, disability advocate and a 5x American Paralympic record holder and Lacey Henderson, a track and field Paralympian and host of the podcast Picked Last In Gym Class. They discuss their athletic journeys, disability in sports and impact of COVID-19. Following these interviews, you'll hear updates from Kristin and Lacey regarding the Tokyo 2020/21 Olympics.

This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.

Transcript

Jessica: Hi flamethrowers, Jessica Luther here. As we announced on Tuesday, we’re now releasing our interviews as separate standalone episodes which will drop on Thursdays. We asked our patrons for feedback and y’all told us you wanted shorter episodes, but we didn’t want to sacrifice time with our guests. We also hope this change will give us more room to go deeper in our interviews. This week we’re including two interviews back to back; both are about disability, COVID-19, and sports. Here’s the first. Okay, first, tell me who you are and what you do.

Kristin: Hi, thanks so much for having me on. I’m Kristin Duquette…Don’t know where to begin, because I feel like I have lived about five different lives at this point.

Jessica: Kristin Duquette is a former Team USA swimmer for the Paralympic league. She’s a former Obama appointee who now works in the federal government. She’s also a student at the Naval Postgraduate School for Homeland Defense and Security. 

Kristin: And definitely a disability rights advocate, nationwide and internationally.

Jessica: Well that does sound like five lifetimes, that’s very impressive. If you feel comfortable with this, can you tell us a little bit about your disability and what it means to have a progressive disability and the impact of that on your life?

Kristin: Yeah, totally. So, I grew up non-disabled, meaning I didn’t show any symptoms of any kind of disability at all. At the time when I was a kid I was doing about six different sports.

Jessica: Oh, wow.

Kristin: Yeah, wanted to be an Olympic swimmer, I wanted to be Natalie Coughlin.

Reporter: Coughlin’s got the lead there. Medeiros and Bootsma chasing…And it’s gonna be Natalie Coughlin!

Kristin: And I loved backstroke. What started to happen was I couldn’t keep up with my friends. I remember at a swim meet doing a flip turn at the wall and when I flipped I looked on either side in the middle of the flip turn and I couldn’t see anyone around me. I was like, wow, I’m totally killing it here. I think I was, what, like 7 or 8. I was a very competitive person, and that hasn’t changed. But I touched the wall and saw no one else is in the pool because I was that slow, and everyone was clapping. My shoulder blades were starting to stick out, and it’s called scapular winging. I was starting to trip over my feet, and I remember when I was about 7, 8, 9, being like, “Kristin, why can’t you do this?” Just run home faster, or just kick a little harder. What is going on?

I got a genetic test and a bunch of tests when I was 8 and on the week of my 9th birthday I was diagnosed with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, which is a specific kind of muscular dystrophy. It’s genetic, it’s non-life-threatening for the majority of people. Growing up was not fun. I definitely went through my phases of depression and struggling of trying to fit in, just like all kids growing up. But the more I was growing up also different aspects of my body were just degrading at the same time. So while I was maturing intellectually and socially, physical parts of my body were going in the opposite direction.  

Jessica: What did this mean for your sports career?

Kristin: I wasn’t aware of disabled sports, I was’t aware of Paralympics or anything like that. I just quit all sports, and I took up music. I just threw myself into academics. I used to be manager of different sports teams and I despised it. I just wanted to also be out on the field. It was only when I was in high school I re-taught myself how to swim. I wanted to do something on my own body’s merit and I wanted to be with my friends. 

Jessica: Can you tell me what you mean when you re-taught yourself how to swim? What did that look like? How do you explain that to someone who is able-bodied, how to re-learn a skill like that?

Kristin: Yeah, I mean, essentially I look six years off and I remember sitting down and being like, okay, I mentally remember how to do it regardless of if you’re in a different phase of a body, you mentally still remember how to do it. Like, I still remember how to run even though my legs could not do that. But you can imagine that, right? So a lot of different visualization with memory, and I was just like, let’s see what we can do. I remember looking up different YouTube videos of technique of Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, just very high-stake races that I would actually take to the pool and pretend it was like the final countdown, but it was really with like a senior citizen swimming next to me and they didn’t know that it was the final countdown. So I used a lot of imagination, but just getting back into the water was so beautiful in the sense that I had no one around, I just fell in love with something all over again that gave me so much freedom and joy in a world that I really didn’t feel like I belonged in a lot of senses. Also, I was getting that endorphin high and the chemical releases that I hadn’t had in years. But the end goal was to be on my high school swim team, and I knew that no one else was disabled at all. So I said to myself, and I don’t know where this came from, but I said if I could swim 600 laps – and the pool was maybe 10, 11 yards, it wasn’t a 25m or anything like that – I said if I could swim 600 laps in that pool in one day I can at least show this high school coach that I love the water. I’m not gonna be making points, but hopefully I can add something to the team. So I made a journal, I did a bunch of workouts, I logged it all, and I eventually did that goal a year later. I emailed her and she was like, “I have no clue who you are.” I can’t imagine now…I was fifteen, like, getting an email from a 15 year old, like, look, I did this and I swam this but I can’t win points for your team, can I be on your team? She said, “I don’t know who you are but you definitely show determination and a passion for this. I would love if you were on our team that you also trained for the Paralympics.” So that’s how I actually learned about the Paralympics and started.

Jessica: That’s so interesting. So you hadn’t seen, growing up, you hadn’t seen disabled athletes?

Kristin: No. So actually, a funny story that I like to say is when I wasn’t competing and I wasn’t swimming – I think I was about 13 at the time – I remember watching the 2004 Olympic Games and just watching all the races that were happening in Greece and I remember thinking, my god, if I had another shot at swimming and racing, god, I would just give it my all. Six years later in 2010 I competed at that same venue as the captain of Team USA.

Jessica: You had set…Am I correct on this? You have set American Paralympic records?

Kristin: American records, yes. 

Jessica: Yeah! What does that feel like? What does that feel like to set a record like that?

Kristin: It’s pretty cool, I’m not gonna lie! [laughs]

Jessica: So in the middle of all this, you go to college. We’re talking about your college years. 

Kristin: Yeah.

Jessica: You go to Wheaton. Can you tell us the story of trying to swim while you’re at Wheaton?

Kristin: Yeah. I met up with a swim coach beforehand, you know, I was 17, 18; he was like, “I’ve trained with other Paralympic swimmers.” I’m like, yeah, this is awesome, so I went there. Just being a disabled person in general, you have to be your advocate at all times, and I was growing into speaking up for myself in those ways because growing up I felt so much shame for looking and operating so differently from everyone else around me. I had a comment one time from my coach of, like, “Oh, you said you need help doing X, Y, Z? Does your mom help you put your competition suit on too?” Things like that. I didn’t know how to respond, I didn’t understand the context, and I didn’t feel included at all. Some of the swimmers were nice, but I definitely was not included. I was told multiple times that I was too intent on training for something that I really wanted.

What eventually happened was I was actually at a training in San Diego, California with one of the Team USA coaches and I got an email in August from the coach of all the reasons why I should no longer be on the swim team, and they were gonna have tryouts this year and I could try out but it was very likely I wouldn’t make it and I could still swim at the pool if I wanted to but the chances of me being actually on the swim team now were not gonna happen. It was eight bullet points and some of them were, “You take away from your teammates’ concentration before their events because you ask for help to get out of the pool,” – obviously, because these pools don’t have ADA compliance of lifts, so I do have to get pulled out. I physically can’t pull myself out of a pool. It related a lot to asking for help in a lot of things that I legitimately needed help with. Again, I felt kind of a ton of shame, I felt like I was a burden, and I hated it, and I didn’t know where else to go. I transferred to Trinity because it was close to home and I did that within two weeks of the semester of my sophomore year and I filed a complaint with the Department of Education of that instance at Wheaton college with the swim coach.   

Jessica: That was with the office of civil rights?

Kristin: Yes.

Jessica: What happened with it?

Kristin: You know, I think maybe about a year or two later I got a letter, but I don’t think anything really came of it. I know a lot of people said, you know, “Kristin, you should sue the school.” I quite frankly just didn’t have it in me. I just felt so much shame, I didn’t want to rehash so much of that.

Jessica: So, you had the goal of going to the 2012 Paralympics in London. When did you find out that that was not gonna happen?

Kristin: The 2012 US Paralympic trials were in North Dakota. So, I’m a backstroker and I remember since I was in a lower class less events were going to be available in the London Games. It was for an event that was not my event, and I did the 50 free, I saw my time; I was like, yeah, this isn’t gonna work. I knew that, but what they did is after the swim meet they ask you to go into a room and they announce the team and I knew I didn’t make it, but I still went because a lot of my friends were going to make it. I’ll never forget that conflicting moment of feeling like my heart was swept on the floor and stomped on at the same time feeling really happy for my friends that are crying because they made a dream that they wanted while my dream was crushed. It did take a while to not feel depressed and to know that there’s so much else to do outside of competing in swimming. After London 2012 I remember talking with my college advisor on what my thesis would be and we wanted to tie in so much of my personal experience, and I thought about and eventually wrote about whether disability rights are viewed as human rights in a UN context in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, specifically article 30.5, which is the right to sport.

Jessica: Yeah, and you went to the UN, correct? In 2016, to talk about this. Can you give us…What is like your elevator pitch for your argument? What were you arguing in your thesis?

Kristin: Wow, I’m really put on the spot! [laughs] 

Jessica: That’s fine, we can, like–

Kristin: No, I’ll try! I mean, I put enough work into it, and it was a very expensive education, so…Essentially the argument is that it’s valid and it needs to happen. But the disability community on an international level, it’s the biggest minority population in the world, it’s drastically under-represented, and the majority of a lot of governments are still very much focusing on basic human rights for people that are disabled, because its needed, but at the same time I wanna push it. As my coaches in the past have said, I am a pit bull. I wanna push it to all of the other levels of recreation, of sport, of media, of sexual reproduction rights, and it’s gonna take all of us, not those that are just disabled to do that.

Jessica: A good friend of mine is an organizer, and she always says that hope is a discipline, you gotta work at that, you know? That that’s not something you can just hold all the time. Is access to sport a human right?

Kristin: I would categorize sport as culture, and access to culture is a human right. I would constitute that obviously as a secondary human right compared to food, water, shelter; I would 100% see it more as also an access because non-disabled people have access to that, and so we need equal access. 

Jessica: So, the pandemic has been affecting all kinds of athletes, from amateur to professional, and we’ve seen that. But in what ways do you think disabled athletes are uniquely affected?

Kristin: Yeah, so one thing that we do have going for ourselves is the ability to adapt. We’re always adapting to different situations, we’re always adapting to getting more injuries, we’re more susceptible to physical things that come in our way, and obviously systems too. So I think the biggest thing is we’re already creative, we have a leg up in that sense. I also think that at the same time depending on the disability itself, there’s only kind of a window for a lot of disabilities, that you really peak, and a lot of that is contingent on time and where you are in your body to max it out. But also, you know, on top of that, a lot of disabled athletes are also immunocompromised. If I was immunocompromised and also a Paralympic swimmer still training, would I run the risk of using the pool I would always use? There’s a lot of elements that aren’t working in your favor when you’re already physically compromised in some way. 

Jessica: I have a couple more questions.

Kristin: Go for it.

Jessica: If that’s okay.

Kristin: Yeah yeah yeah! I’m in quarantine, I’m not going anywhere! [laughter]

Jessica: Fair, fair. So I know that disabled athletes’ access to sports is a huge topic, but are there 2 or 3 maybe basic things that need to change or could change in order to make sport more accessible? Or I guess, if you were in charge of the world, Kristin, what would be the first thing that you would change around disabled sports?

Kristin: Oh gosh. [laughs] Would people want me to have that power? I would increase the ability for disabled athletes to have collegiate scholarships, and I quite frankly would rework the NCAA system to also include disabled athletes, because that–

Jessica: I actually never thought about the fact that it doesn’t!

Kristin: It doesn’t, unless you have a particular type of disability that you are still able to contribute within the NCAA point system.

Jessica: Huh.

Kristin: So, I would love if it was integrated. That can be a bit controversial, of able-bodied and disabled athletes competing on the same teams. There’s a lot of discussion on that, or would you just have disabled teams compete against each other? But we need to integrate that. We also need to have the same amount of coverage for the Paralympics as the Olympics. They need more scholarships, they need more sponsorships. Disabled athletes also need the same amount of care and attention when it comes to mental health, too. 

Jessica: So here’s my fun COVID question: what are you doing to pass the time these days? Have you picked up a hobby, are you binge-watching anything?

Kristin: Oh gosh. I really got into painting my nails, because I would usually never do that because I wouldn’t have the time. Definitely…Oh, this is what I’ve been doing: I have gone down rabbit holes on TikTok of skincare and the Free Britney movement. I’m definitely pro-Britney movement! [laughs]

Jessica: That’s great. That's great. I love her. Her Instagram is a thing of beauty.

Kristin: Yeah! [laughs]

Jessica: Well thank you so much for being on Burn It All Down, Kristin. This has been wonderful.

Kristin: Thank you for having me. Such a pleasure.

Jessica: You can follow Kristin on Instagram @kirstin__duquette and on Twitter @KristinDuquette. And now, let’s turn to our second guest.

Lacey: My name is Lacey Henderson. I am a Paralympian. I do long jump professionally for US Paralympics. I dabble in the 100m as well, and I lost my leg above the knee to childhood cancer. I had a cancer called synovial sarcoma and then kind of was an athlete with a prosthetic leg growing up –  I cheered competitively in high school and then I cheered in college and then I kind of in a weird roundabout way found track and field as I was finishing my undergrad, so it’s been a great way to kind of use your disability to get a job and pay the bills. 

Jessica: [laughs] Will you take me…I’d like to talk about your first race. Could you tell me about that? 

Lacey: I’ll tell the embarrassing–

Jessica: Okay. 

Lacey: When I have time I tell, like, the glory story, but it was not. It was the opposite of that. 

Jessica: Okay. 

Lacey: So…[laughs]

Jessica: Tell me the non-glory story.

Lacey: I had basically started pole vaulting…My dad and I went to Olympic trials for pole vault; he and I are really competitive and we’ll just talk trash, like, that’s my actual true talent is trash-talking. [laughs] So, one day we were just talking about who was the better athlete and somehow he was like, “Lacey, you couldn’t pole vault two feet. You’re not fast enough, you’re not strong enough, you just wouldn’t be able to do it.” At 21, you can’t tell me nothin’. I know it all, and only my family that comes from a pole vault background would be able to have a pole vault pit and poles just ready, like, [laughter] just on demand. 

Jessica: Sure.

Lacey: So the next day I jumped; I jumped six feet. But basically I really got into the feeling, like, I knew that my cheer career was gonna end and I just wanted to still feel like I could do flips and fly. So I got a running leg, I started competing just like indoor kind of all-comer track meets and I got asked to do my first 100m race. So, I’m from Denver, and my dad is a well-known track name for at least a while, probably not now…Yeah, time keeps going. But we’re lined up at the line and I know the announcers from cheerleading – I used to judge cheer competitions as well – and so they were just trolling the hell out of me, like, “Lacey Henderson, daughter of legend TJ Henderson, all-star cheerleader…” blah blah blah. And of course, again, me, 21, I’m like, “Yasss, that’s me! I’m the best!” [Jessica laughing]

So, we line up – it’s a unified race, so they have all ages and different levels of disability. The person I’m lined up to is this younger boy and he…I’m a right leg amputee, he’s a left leg amputee. We get set, the gun goes off, and our prosthetic blades clip each other and so I go down immediately to the ground. I just remember laying face-planted on the track. For a second I was like, man, they really had to do that whole introduction! [laughs] And I hear one of the coaches, who’s coincidentally a congenital amputee, I just hear him be like, “Lacey, get up. Lacey, get up, get up. You have to finish. Get up.” I get up, I finish the race. But they actually let me come back the following day and I’m able to race again and I qualify for London. So, the second part of the story is usually what I tell people when I wanna be impressive, but that’s what actually happened. [laughter]

Jessica: Wow, that’s amazing. So, you have been to the Paralympics; you went to Rio in 2016, you competed in the 100m dash and then the long jump where you placed 8th–

Lacey: Yeah.

Jessica: –which is fantastic. So, tell me when you started thinking about the 2020 Tokyo Games.

Lacey: First of all, that was very nice of you to say I finished 8th which is fantastic. 

Jessica: It IS fantastic! [laughs]

Lacey: Yeah, I mean, I made finals, which is crazy, because I think when you get to a certain level and just athletes in general you’re so hard on yourself, you’re like, “Don’t say that, I don’t wanna hear it.” But it is true, I made finals. It was not the best meet of my life, but I did make finals. People did not make finals, I have to remind myself. Thank you for that, thank you for that reminder.

Jessica: You're welcome.

Lacey: So, I wasn’t satisfied, clearly, with me Rio performance, and I was like, alright, we’ll get ‘em next time. So that was pretty much what planted the seed. I knew I was scratching the surface of my skillset, and I was like, alright, if we do another four years it’s gonna be poppin’ off. 

Jessica: Okay, so when did it start to enter your mind that they may postpone the 2020 Games?

Lacey: I think maybe January-February, my mom started being like, “Oh, this COVID is really bad.” And I still was traveling for work, I still was traveling for training. I was living in Austin and I moved to Denver because I was having issues with facilities. In Denver I have a little bit better resources, we were gonna finish the year with the home team and maybe finish the career in Denver where it all started, it was gonna be a very beautiful metaphor. I start going to my tracks, and they’re locked up – not like normal locked up like one padlock, triple padlocked up. You’re like, well, this is gonna be a little bit more difficult to be able to find a sand pit if I can’t get to a track. But I was used to getting kicked out of facilities, like, for being a track athlete at the professional level, honestly, we get no love except for Olympic years, and even then they’re like, “Get off the track. You’re not supposed to be here.”

Jessica: Is it because you’re using high school and college facilities?

Lacey: Yeah. If you’re an alumni or it’s your school it’s usually a lot easier, but conveniently I went to a school where they don’t have a track team. 

Jessica: Okay.

Lacey: But probably late February there starts being a little bit more inconsistencies with tracks being available, and then I would say mid-March it starts dawning on you that you’re like, there’s no way that they can do this. There’s no way they can do this. If I may be frank…Okay, let me just preface this by saying I have been lucky enough to be an athlete for my adult life, so I don’t really know a lot about business, I don’t really know a lot about budgets, but with that being said USA was definitely on team make-this-happen. We had a couple of calls from USOPC for a few kind of emergency-type situations because there was athletes on these calls like swimmers and water polo athletes like, “Well, I’m going into the ocean to try to train,” or, “I’m going into lakes to try to train because I can’t get to the pool.”

I have international competitors and I have really strong competitors from Italy and Spain and they were locked in their houses, and it just seemed…I remember at one point I said on a call, I was like, “This seems like the opposite of integrity.” The idea of sports is so beautiful and so wonderful and harmonic but the business side of sport is like, oh, we spent a lot of money on this and we need to do everything we can to make this work. So, a lot of people were kind of freaking out. Track meets for us were just dropping left and right. You have to qualify in order to go to trials, and trials you have to qualify for the team to go to Tokyo. Everything was postponed for a while, postponed, postponed. Then when Tokyo got postponed it was like, alright, we’re just gonna re-do this year next year.

Jessica: Can you tell me what that’s like? I’m an anxious person…Maybe this is too basic a question but how did you manage it? How did you feel?

Lacey: First of all, let me say I have a fantastic sports psychologist.

Jessica: Good.

Lacey: I was texting him a lot! [laughs]

Jessica: Good.

Lacey: We had a couple of FaceTime calls. And honestly when they announced it officially I felt relief. It was becoming so stressful to try to fight to find a track that’s open, try to fight to find gyms that were open, which…They were all closed. It was like, this is real. They finally made the decision, and you can finally regroup and reprogram for the upcoming year.

Jessica: So you felt relief. I’m wondering if there was anything you did that you normally wouldn’t have done because you were training? Did you go, like, eat a bunch of ice cream?

Lacey: I like wine. I’ll say that. [laughter] I’m a gal that likes a nice glass of wine. Not really, I mean, you see jokes about people day-drinking at 11am which I do think is funny, but I still try to maintain some type of routine. That was one thing that I learned a long time ago with track, that having something that resembles routine kind of helps your brain not just feel like it’s just in complete desperation. Which…Some days it worked, some days it didn’t, and that’s okay. I kind of tried to do things that I don’t normally do, so I was doing little video yoga classes and trying to run distance around the blocks of my neighborhood – I’m not cut out for that I learned pretty quickly, but the yoga videos were pretty fun. I just tried to do things that were relaxing and not track-specific.

Jessica: So what does training look like for you right now then? Is it running around your neighborhood? How are you getting ready?

Lacey: So, the plan is basically now I’m doing some light training, still on the track, I’m really maximizing my equipment which needed…God, it needed help. But my prosthetic is nice now, like, I have it set up so it’s getting real nice for 2020, which is great.

Jessica: Can you tell me what that means? Maximize your equipment?

Lacey: Yeah, it’s so funny. There’s rules and regulations – I get asked this a lot – there’s rules and regulations mostly for the bilateral amputees, but for the unilateral amputees you’ll start seeing trends, basically, of the alignment on a lot of the prosthetics. A lot of the time the foot looks really far behind so your weight line from your hip down to your toe is almost at a triple extension angle. Basically, when your foot is hitting the ground you’re almost in a terminal stance type phase. So it was really just getting the alignment down; I was on running blades that were way too stiff, I wasn’t getting good compression last year. We actually had issues with shipping because most of my feet come from Austria. So I had some old ones that were just way too stiff, so thank goodness my prosthetist – that’s the term for that clinical profession – but my prosthetist is very smart, he’s really good at physics. So we just shaved off the sides and we were able to get the compression that we needed for now. We’ve definitely learned to be resourceful in an unprecedented time. But we’ll start preseason training, which is heavy volume stuff, in October. 

Jessica: Before we talk big picture stuff around disabled athletes, I wanted to ask: did the postponement affect any other parts of your life? I assume you had post-Paralympic plans.

Lacey: Absolutely. 

Jessica: Any of those been put on hold? What are you doing about that part of your life?

Lacey: It’s been on hold and it’s changed, which I think is a good thing. I had a lot of speaking events lined up this year so also my bank account was–

Jessica: Sure, yep, yep!

Lacey: –a little bit more frowny faces. But you know, I’ll do a Zoom, whatever. [laughs] But my plan was retiring after Tokyo and I was ready to kind of pick up stuff for my own podcast and pick up stuff for my career outside of sport and actually I was really just burning out. 2018, 2019, I was training by myself, I was having all these leg problems, and I was like, I just need to get through to Tokyo, just need to get through to Tokyo. That’s not a great motivator, [laughs] but I guess it was good enough at the time. This year being able to take the time to see, “Do I like track? Yes, I do like track. Oh, here are all the things that my leg needed that I’ve been putting off, putting off, and now we’re fixing them.” I feel like maybe I could go to 2024. I think it’s just been kind of a weird but good reset. USOPC offers schooling, you can do online school, so I’m getting my master’s degree right now, which is kind of cool.

Jessica: In what?

Lacey: MBA.

Jessica: Awesome!

Lacey: It was cool. It was available! I didn’t really think about it, but I panicked. I was like, “What am I gonna do with all my time!” And then it turned out I was just not organizing my time very well, but a lot of that was constant exhaustion, fighting your prosthetic. So, I don’t know, I’m still competitive and I’m still able to make teams and it still is fun and serving me so then, you know, why not.

Jessica: Okay, so not retiring. Interesting.

Lacey: No, not this time. Not this go around!

Jessica: Alright. So, obviously the pandemic is affecting athletes of all stripes at this point. In what ways do you think disabled athletes are being uniquely affected by the pandemic? What kind of conversations with other disabled athletes…What have those conversations been like? What are you hearing from your friends that are Paralympians?

Lacey: Okay…Sorry, I just heard a lawnmower go off. I don’t think you can hear it. Okay.

Jessica: That’s so funny – my husband just mowed the lawn and I was like, “You better finish at 1pm!” [laughs] So I feel you.

Lacey: I was at a call yesterday and I swear to god my neighbor was trolling me. I’m like, come on! Okay. So, first I think I was like, “Disabled athletes: we’re adaptable! We’re the masters at adapting!” I mean, I think while that’s true there’s also so many risks that I feel like is going to be interesting in how it’s covered and taken care of. My personal belief is, you know, a world post-COVID is going to still be very much affected by it, so having 10,000 athletes in one dining hall at one time is gonna be creative, to say the least, regardless of ability or not. For me, I’m lucky enough that I’m an ambulatory athlete where I’m just kind of like, all I need is a leg, you know? That’s it. For athletes I think a lot about like the seated athletes, like a lot of higher-spine injury athletes, like the bocce athletes, any type of quad athlete that’s gonna need assistance transferring from their chair to their throwing chair.

It’s gonna be interesting, and it will definitely be more heavily affected than the non-disabled athletes for sure – which isn’t to say that non-disabled athletes…I think that there’s this mindset where people think that the disabled athletes, like, we run more risks…Which I guess we do, but there’s plenty of non-disabled athletes with extenuating circumstances that could be affected by COVID. Just because you’re an athlete doesn’t mean that you have a steel immune system. There’s also the fact that for track and field, at least in the US, at lot of our officials are just the exact age demographic of the people most affected by this. So, hopefully…I have full faith that there’s people much smarter than me making plans for those circumstances because everybody has a right to play and, you know, these different categories of athletes should still be able to do their sport, and I know that they’re still training. Hopefully the powers that be have plans put in place for that.

Jessica: One thing I’ve been thinking about with COVID is we’re hearing about…Obviously a lot of people have died, but a lot of people have gotten it and gotten better but had disability on the other side of it, these long-haulers. We’re gonna have a significant number of new disabled people specifically from this pandemic that we’re living in right now. I’m wondering what your message would be to those people that wanna be athletic and how should people within sports be preparing for this?

Lacey: That’s a great question actually. I would say, first of all I guess to everybody: you learn quickly that no one disability is created equal. I think what we’re learning now with COVID is no one person responds to a disease or a treatment as equally as somebody else. The cool thing about sports is that there are people, especially now with the Paralympic movement growing, there are people put in place that are equipped to present sport to you and make it accessible to you no matter what your circumstances – your physical circumstance, I should be honest, because, let me tell you: being disabled’s one of the most expensive things I’ve done. [laughs] 

Jessica: Yeah, of course.

Lacey: You know, I didn’t sign up for it but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. So, without the risk of getting too political hopefully after this too we find better ways to serve the disabled community because even before COVID we were the largest minority in the world and it’s just gonna keep growing. For people recovering from COVID that are gonna acquire prolonged or permanent issues, you just learn to make your disability a part of your routine. I think the biggest misconception is that people with disabilities wake up super duper inspired and jazzed to just take on the world and prove everybody wrong. You’re like, nah man, I’m just trying to go to the grocery store today! [laughs] Like, the disableds: we’re just like you! The biggest thing I guess for disability, especially in the US, is you have to learn to advocate for yourself because no one else is doing it right now. 

Jessica: Hm. So, I know that disabled athletes’ access to sport is a huge topic. Are there 2 or 3 things that need to change or could change to make sport more accessible? Like, if Lacey was in charge of the world and got to change 2 or 3 things that would suddenly make sport more accessible for disabled communities. What would that be for you?

Lacey: Yeah. Honestly, I would do a lot more cohesive and unified sports. I was lucky enough to train in Phoenix alongside Olympians and it was a utopia-type experience for training. Like, we had able-bodied, we had disabled athletes, we had everybody. That proved to me that everybody can grow and everybody can get better regardless of the people you surround yourself with. I think right now, the US have gotten very comfortable with the NCAA system providing sport development for athletes becoming adults, which is great, but not great for everybody because not everybody can be an NCAA athlete and score points for that team. I think our country could do a lot better job of just better sport development programs, we can do more local sport development programs, and make them unified, make them for everybody. Because the crazy thing about disabled sport and non-disabled sport is that its the same sport. [Jessica laughs] Like in track and field, it’s the same event, same distance. The equipment may look different but at the end of the day it is the same event. Badminton’s the same way, I learned that last year! Don’t know a lot about badminton but holy shmokes, what an incredible sport! They train with their able-bodied counterparts because it’s the same sport! I think people in the disability community, sometimes we get wrapped up in it too where things need to be separated or made specific for you, made specific for your disability, made specific for people with different disabilities, and sometimes you just need to jump in and play. That was, I think, the biggest thing that I learned growing up. Even though I was in disability denial, like, “I’m not disabled, I just have one leg!” [laughs] But that was the best thing that served me, was that you have that camaraderie, you’re able to make friends in the same sport you do, and I think that’s important because in our communities, in our closest communities, typically if you are a person with a disability you’re the only person in your community with a disability. So to try to do a sport consistently you need to have groups that are going to help you achieve your sport regardless of who else participates in it.

Jessica: So, can you tell us a little bit about obviously what’s next for training for Tokyo next year, but what else are you doing?

Lacey: Yeah, so right now I’m finishing my MBA. I just bought a house, which is exciting. We have a house! I’m doing a lot of raking and, like…[laughs]

Jessica: Yeah, there’s always something with a house.

Lacey: There’s always something. It’s actually a little overwhelming. But other than that, yeah, Tokyo’s the plan. We’d like to travel…My boyfriend’s grandma lives in Italy and my family in Italy so we always like to go back and at least hang out. I kind of feel like you can get away for a second.

Jessica: That’s where I want to go when this is over. I’m learning Italian. [laughs]

Lacey: Nice!

Jessica: Well, it's real loose. It’s like once a week. 

Lacey: Hey, but you know, they appreciate the effort regardless.

Jessica: Yeah.

Lacey: I speak Spanish but I’ll do it with like an Italian accent. It’s amazing how far you can get.

Jessica: It’s pretty close! Yeah yeah yeah.

Lacey: You pick up some words. But yeah, I guess besides training and school we’re still planning on doing season two of Picked Last For Gym Class, for my podcast. I interview people who basically talk about the stories of struggles before success and it's about 50/50 disabled people/non-disabled people. So I would love to just keep working a little bit more on the creative podcasting side. I’ve had a lot of fun. But yeah, I think more than anything this year’s been a reminder, and I was reminded the last Olympic year too that you’re never just an athlete, you’re never just a person with a disability, you’re never just a mom, you’re never just whatever. We can be so many things and there’s space for all of it and it’s been a weird but good year to be reminded of that.

Jessica: Thank you Lacey Henderson for being on Burn It All Down.

Lacey: Thank you.

Jessica: You can follow Lacey Henderson on Instagram.

Lacey: My name’s laceyisyourfriend there. I have a Twitter, @lacesyourfriend – I ran out of characters for that. [laughs]

Jessica: Her website is laceyjhenderson.com. Her podcast is called Picked Last In Gym Class. That’s it for me, Jessica Luther. Burn It All Down will be back in your feed on Tuesday with episode 171. Until then, burn on, not out.

Update 23/08/21

Kristin: Hey, Burn It All Down! This is Kristin Duquette. It is August…2021. A little bit of a pause there because I feel like time is running still during COVID. I’m so looking forward to the Paralympic Games that are beginning in just a few days. I cannot wait to cheer on Team USA and I am so excited to watch my fellow friends and some former teammates in swimming. They have gone through hell and back having an extra year to not only train but adjust to COVID. I cannot wait to also watch wheelchair basketball. I've gotten to know some of those players fairly well, and I’m ecstatic that their journey has made it to the Paralympic Games that they’ve trained so long for. In addition, I’m really looking forward to seeing track and field and seeing how fast our athlete s go. I think there's so much athleticism. I’m beyond excited to see. I’ll be watching through Peacock and NBC Sports app. Definitely a little bit of a bummer that NBC is not airing nearly as much as they are and did for the Olympics. That is certainly disheartening.

But on the flip side, I do love the amount of progress that I have seen, and the amount of sponsorships, and also the increase of airtime for the Paralympics here in the United States. So, I really can’t wait to watch. Jessica Long on the US Paralympic swim team, she’s a favorite of mine. I always have loved seeing her swim. Rudy Garcia-Tolson is a friend of mine, and he just has a heart of gold and is so kind, has worked incredibly hard and has a great story. McKenzie Coan also…Colleen Young is someone I also used to swim with on Team USA. So it's just really great to see these athletes supported. And I can’t help but also mention Matthew Torres – he was about 8 years old, 8 or 9 I would say, when I was training, and so just like all the athletes it's just so great to watch and witness their journeys and cheer them on during such a hard year for everyone. So, I’m so excited to see that come to reality.

Lacey: Hey, okay! So this is Lacey Henderson, and boy oh boy, what a journey it’s been. [sighs] Well, I had a great season, to be honest, and a lot of stuff that I needed to get sorted with my prosthesis…So, we got that all sorted away. A lot of it was very creative from my local clinician, so shoutout to a king – Chris White, you da best. And yeah, I kicked ass during the track season. I had a lot of breakthroughs, and broke the American record – that’s both North and South America – and went to team trials, kicked ass there, won by a lot, which was great. And then a team announcement comes [laughs] and I was not named to Tokyo, to some selection procedural stuff. I’m just tired even thinking about it, even shaping the words for my mouth. So, that’s been a big bummer. I did try to challenge it through a couple of different avenues, but the fight was futile. The fight was really more about standing up for myself, honestly. Team USA pretty much has their stuff locked up tight, and it doesn't necessarily need to make sense. I am finishing the year being ranked 5th best in the world, and I really thought that they would want to support sending somebody who was gonna make finals and do well and that was the best in the country to go, but there's a lot of politics, as we all know in sport, and disabled sport is no different. You know, what a beautiful, [laughs] beautiful gift.

So I’ve been able to find other jobs and a couple of other things. I jumped a little bit later after trials and broke the record again. It was just a little bit difficult, honestly, because after the team was announced I was told by Team USA since we only got 26 female slots I ended up being #27, so I had to train throughout the whole season. And they were just like, hang on, hang on, you could still get team slots, this could happen, that could happen…So I was very much channeling my inner Lloyd Christmas from Dumb and Dumber. I was like, oh, you’re telling me there’s a chance! So, trained, did really well. But then they announced a final team and my name was not on it. So, I'm honestly dealing with the repercussions of that. It’s been emotionally draining, you know. A lot of us do a lot of this sport. I moved, I made my boyfriend change his whole life and move to Denver and we got done exactly what we needed to get done as far as performances, but it just didn’t make the cut – as per their selection criteria, which sucks very badly for me. But it is what it is. I jumped so well that I am one of the few women right now that’s on our national team, so, as irony and fate would have it, I am somewhat contractually obligated to jump for another year for Team USA.

So, I think since performance and everything is going really well, I am far from being done. I guess now Paris is on the docket. I kept thinking that after this Games I would be  done and be a grown-up, and I guess I’m just gonna Peter Pan it for a little bit longer. It's always a journey, you know? This shit it crazy, and it never goes the way that you expect it. But it's really been a good life, and I’m just lucky that I enjoy the event, I enjoy the technical aspects of long jump, and I'm seeing great results. I've learned to get along a lot better with my dad. [laughs] He's been coaching me, and it's going great. But man, it is…You know, as an adult that hangs out with your 75 year old father, that's also...You know, it asks a lot.

I don't know if I'm going to watch the games. [laughs] My feelings are very hurt! And yeah, you know, I put up a good fight. I don't know. The biggest thing for me when I went on Instagram and tried to get at least an email that I could write to try to fight for my case to go to Tokyo, of course it was about Tokyo, but a lot of it was I couldn't go to bed or look at myself in the mirror or just go on with my daily life and call myself an advocate if I didn’t rise to the occasion when it came for advocating for myself. I think so often in disabled sport and just the world of disability in general the weird thing is we take everybody in anytime and it’s a really hard and scary thing to navigate and the powers that be are designed to be intimidating and people are afraid to speak up, and I just could not bear calling myself an advocate or a leader in any type of way if I was not willing to put up a fight for myself, you know? It's a lot easier to retweet or share something, but if it comes down to that nitty gritty and you’re making those phone calls, you’re sending those emails...It was really hard. And man, I’m gonna let you know: they were not, uh, that nice to me in their responses! [laughs]

But I had to stand up for myself. I mean, I've put up so much of a fight already, and nothing in this world is given to you. That's for life, but that's definitely in sport. You know, the journey continues and I'm just glad to be a part of a sport movement that is important to me and something that I am willing to fight for, the integrity of it, for while I'm still here and while I’m still doing it. So, y’all hang onto your hands, because I'll see y’all next season. Thanks!