Fifty years apart, two gold medals — and the world they changed

Fifty years of Paralympic history stretches between two gold medals — and they couldn't look more different. In 1960, Margaret Maughan stood in a Rome field, drew her bow, and won the UK's first-ever Paralympic gold in archery. A few years ago, British athlete Lauren Steadman stood in a BBC One kitchen, served judges a sticky toffee pudding, and won Celebrity MasterChef 2026.

Same gold. Entirely different world.

The first step in Rome

Back then, more than 400 athletes gathered in Rome — and every single one of them was a wheelchair user. Maughan, who died in 2020 aged 91, remembered the Games for BBC's Sporting Witness as the moment disability sport found its footing. It was humble, and it was historic.

Six years later, a teenage Canadian named Rick Hansen broke his back in a truck accident. By age 15 he was paraplegic. By the 1980s, he was circling the globe in a wheelchair on the Man In Motion World Tour — a 40,000-kilometre odyssey to prove that people with disabilities could go anywhere if barriers were removed. Before all that, though, he won six Paralympic medals: three gold, two silver, one bronze, plus 19 international wheelchair marathons and three world championships.

From one arm to one gold

Elliot Mujaji knows that journey too. A promising Zimbabwean sprinter, he suffered severe burns and the loss of his right arm while working as an electrician. At Sydney 2000, he sprinted to his country's first-ever Paralympic gold in the 100 metres — against a backdrop of virtually no support for Paralympic athletes back home.

Now skip forward to Tokyo 2020. Avani Lekhara, born in a village in Rajasthan, India, took gold in the 10m air rifle — India's first-ever female Paralympic gold medallist. She repeated it in Paris in 2024, becoming the first Indian woman to win three Paralympic medals. World No. 1 in her class, she keeps proving that a spinal cord injury defines nothing about her limits.

A different kind of every day

That's the quiet miracle of the Paralympic dream: it keeps growing more ambitious, more human, more ordinary. Larissa Klaassen, a Dutch woman, won Paralympic cycling gold at Tokyo 2020. Five years on, she swapped her tandem bike for the judo mat — and took bronze at this year's European Championships after just nine months. "To win bronze at my first-ever judo Europeans was insane," she said. Now she's targeting LA28.

Even off the track, the momentum carries. Steadman's golds in swimming and paratriathlon led to Strictly Come Dancing, Celebrity SAS, and now a MasterChef trophy — beating an Olympic weightlifter and a Love Island star with pan-fried scallops and beef Wellington.

The greater purpose

And the world champions who aren't Paralympic at all are catching the same spirit. England's rugby Red Roses saw their record winning streak end in a thrilling draw with Canada — and head coach John Mitchell refused to call it a setback. "There will be greater things to come as a result of this," he said. "There's a greater purpose and one Test match is not going to take us away from our purpose."

That's the throughline linking Rick Hansen's wheelchair circling the globe, Margaret Maughan's bow, and Avani Lekhara's rifle: the belief that barriers are temporary, that the next chapter is always bolder than the last. Fifty years ago, the dream was simply to compete. Today it's MasterChef trophies and world No. 1 rankings and gold medals in two different sports. Wherever you set your sights — a kitchen, a judo mat, a rugby pitch — the lesson is the same: the greatest comeback stories always start with the willingness to try something new.