Para-powerlifter Hani Watson: ‘There are people who don’t want to be your inspiration, but why not?’

Hani Watson made her international debut barely six months ago. When she left Australia for the world para-powerlifting championships in Georgia she was ranked 30-something in the world. A week later, when she turned around and came home, she was in the top eight. If that signified a physical leap of quite some margin, the flight over offered some intellectual gains she has carried with her since.

“Seeing how airline people try and assist people with wheelchairs and people with disabilities, that was an eye-opening experience, let me tell you,” Watson says. “On one particular flight there were like 50 wheelchair athletes on board. I’m lucky I can still hobble about, but for others who needed to go to the toilet, transferring people up and down the aisle takes a long time.

“And there was one particular athlete who was just really nasty to the air hostess. I’m just like, ‘you’re not teaching able-bodied people that we are nice people, that we’re individuals and we’re humans. You’re giving them an educational experience in a negative way’. That’s their encounter now with wheelchair users. I’m trying to change it. We’re not all quite like that. We all just need to approach it differently. Be nice to each other, be kind – we’ve all been through so much in the last two years.

“Maybe that person had seen more of a negative impact in their life than what I’ve seen. But disability in my life was not at the forefront, it was not something we talked about when I was growing up. I kind of wish we did, but, but I suppose my attitude towards it is, we’re still normal. We’re still individuals. We just have different ways of doing things, really.”

It may be obvious by now that Watson does not subscribe to stereotypes. Yes, she is