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Outlook: The blind skateboarder going for gold

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Skateboarder Justin Bishop beginning to go down a skatepark ramp holding his cane with a ball on the end

23/02/2022 GMT

The blind skateboarder going for gold

BBC World Service - Outlook, The blind skateboarder going for gold

When skateboarder Justin Bishop went blind he worried he’d lost the sport he loved

Blind skateboarder Justin Bishop uses a cane with a ball on the end to help him skate - he's winning competitions and campaigning for skateboarding to be made a Paralympic sport.

When Justin Bishop was eight years old, he was diagnosed with a condition called retinitis pigmentosa, and was told that one day he would go blind. But two years later he fell in love with skateboarding, and from then on he and his board were inseparable. As his sight began to deteriorate in his late teens, Justin felt he was in a race against time to fit in as much skating as possible, and when he lost his sight at the age of 25 he feared he would never step on a board again. But thanks to the encouragement of his friend, and a cane with a ball on the end of it, Justin is not only winning medals but campaigning for adaptive skateboarding to be included in the Paralympics. A documentary has been made about his story called One Day You'll Go Blind. This interview includes Justin's own recordings of him skateboarding.   

Mark Spencer, Adam Jeanes and Ian Lucas are members of an order of gay male 'nuns' called The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. First founded in the 1970s in San Francisco, orders of the Sisters soon spread all around the world, and Mark, Adam and Ian are members of the London order. Over the years they have cared spiritually for the gay community, and campaigned for gay rights - while having a lot of fun. In the 1980s and 90s when HIV/Aids started to wreak its devastation, and in the face of terrible losses in their community, the Sisters decided they needed a saint of their own, and chose the British film-maker, Derek Jarman. Thirty years on, they tell Laura Thomas their story. 

The Sisters' interview featured extracts from the following films:
Saintmaking, directed by Marco Alessi; 21st Century Nuns, directed by Tom Stephan; Robert Wise's The Sound of Music and Ken Russell's The Devils. 

Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com

Presenter: Jo Fidgen

(Photo: Justin Bishop skateboarding. Credit: Ryne Belanger, TNG Agency)

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