Ade Adepitan felt he had ‘let down’ disabled people after failed volcano climb

Paralympian Ade Adepitan has said he “genuinely thought” he had “let the disabled community down” after he failed to climb a volcano for a documentary series.

The Nigerian-born TV presenter and former wheelchair basketball player said the BBC Two show was called Beyond Boundaries and involved a group of people, all with different disabilities, travelling through Central America.

Speaking to Elizabeth Day on the How To Fail podcast he said: “I was on my way to leaving basketball, really in the direction of retiring in my mindset, and I wanted another challenge.

“I wanted something that would really, really push me, and I remember doing this and finding the first couple of stages quite easy. Everyone else was like struggling, moaning and whinging. I feel bad for saying this, but I loved it.”

Adepitan, 51, said they were told they would be climbing a volcano on the final day and set off at 5am and had until 2pm to get to the top.

However, the group were later told by the expedition leader they would have to go back down as they were not going to make it, according to Adepitan.

He said: “At this point I was like, ‘I’m going to have to do something I’ve never done before and that I’ve always wanted to avoid’.

“I could see his mouth moving, but I wasn’t listening. I was like, ‘I’m going to have to get out of the chair, because he is trying to take control of my situation’.

“This is what I’ve fought all my life for, to have control of my life. This is why I’ve trained and worked so hard to be fit, so I could judge myself, I could tell myself what I could and couldn’t do.

“As a disabled person, you spend your life hearing people trying to tell you what you can and can’t do and what you’re capable of.

“So I just got out of the chair, and as I got out of the chair, I’m like, ‘I’m getting up this volcano one way or another. I don’t care how I get up it, I’m just going to get up it’.

“I just started crawling and I remember all of them looking at me just thinking, ‘What is he doing?’ It was a live volcano, and it was boiling hot, burning hot.

“Every time I was touching the ground, I could feel it burning my hands, burning my knees.

“I’m crawling and scrambling up the volcano and I’m getting emotional because I’m also thinking, like, this is going to be on TV, and thousands, maybe millions, of people are going to watch me who sees himself as a really strong guy on my hands and knees.

“Obviously I know how TV works, I could hear him on the walkie talkie, ‘Ade’s on the floor, he’s on the floor, let’s get the camera over’.

“The cameras were all over the place and suddenly, like, cameras appeared and they were all pointing in my face, and you’re in this really vulnerable moment where you feel emotionally naked.

“I just lost it and started to cry, and I swore at the camera, ‘Why? Leave me alone, I don’t need this’.

“But also in my mind that it’s a TV programme. All the way up I just felt really embarrassed, I felt ashamed and was really, really worried that when they showed this on TV, I’m going to just get people bombarding me, calling me a cripple, or calling me the weakling, or all of this sort of stuff.”

The TV presenter said he later received a text from Olympic athlete Daley Thompson, who called him “an absolute hero”.

“Then suddenly loads of loads of other people started contacting me and telling me how amazing they thought it was”, Adepitan said.

“It just suddenly made me think, ‘Oh shit, it was fine. It was fine to break down. It was fine to be vulnerable’, but it comes from a period where back then you weren’t really allowed to show vulnerability.

“I came from sport as well, where you had to be strong and if there was anything that was really bugging you, you pushed it to one side.

“Then to suddenly show my vulnerability and people not hate me for it, was a real shock for me. I thought I’d failed, I genuinely thought I’d failed and I’d let the disabled community down.”

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is available wherever you get your podcasts.