PARIS, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- British cyclist Sarah Storey made history on Wednesday by becoming the most successful para-athlete ever for Britain, winning her 18th gold medal in the C5 time trial at the Paris Paralympics. Following her victory, Storey emphasized the broader significance of the Paralympics - not just for the athletes, but for society as a whole.
"It's great to see the sporting legacy, with the golds the team has got, including me," she said in an interview with the BBC, before highlighting the impact beyond sport.
"What's happened in sport can be a metaphor for what could happen in the rest of society. We've been given our opportunities to thrive, and we do. If you give every disabled person the opportunity to thrive, they will," she said.
Storey, who also serves as a travel commissioner for Greater Manchester in the north of England, explained that one of her responsibilities is to ensure public transport is accessible for disabled people. She mentioned that she frequently encounters areas for improvement.
"I'm always saying, 'Have you checked the route is step-free?'" she noted, referencing the challenges wheelchair users face with inaccessible routes. "Because there's nothing worse than someone rolling up to set steps, and going; 'Oh, you could have signed it and said it wasn't step-free, this is the way I need to go.'"
She cited the example of Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, an 11-time Paralympic gold medalist who is now a member of the British House of Lords. Despite her status, Grey-Thompson recently had to get out of her wheelchair and crawl off a train at London's Kings Cross station due to poor access and a lack of assistance.
"I said before London 2012 that we were expecting too much of a Paralympics to change society in one fell swoop, and we didn't. Tanni's situation the other day showed that," Storey commented. "You can see that the legacy of sport is amazing, but the legacy for society is still the thing we have to work on." ■
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