In the run up to International Women's Week, we were honoured to welcome a truly inspirational guest speaker - Verity Naylor MBE - to talk about her role as Director of Operations for ParalympicsGB at our Prep School assembly this morning. Mrs Naylor spoke about the incredible achievements of the ParalympicsGB Team, who finished second in the medal table at the Paris Games with a total of 124 medals, and revealed some of the key preparations and immense logistical hurdles that she had to overcome as part of her role.

Mrs Naylor, who has been to 6 Paralympic Summer and Winter Games so far, revealed it takes seven years to plan for a Paralympic Games. The huge logistics operation involves liaising with transport providers such as Eurostar and long-haul airlines to increase their provision for wheelchair access and ensure accessibility as well as sufficient storage space for the extra equipment and kit to be transported.

We were interested to see photos of the team's patriotic accommodation in Paris 2024 - including images of all the mattress toppers that had to be brought over to ensure the athletes had a good night's sleep on the cardboard beds! We also learnt that Mrs Naylor found a giant knitted croissant that had been left behind by Olympian Tom Daley with his medal still inside (he was very grateful to have it returned to him)!

Mrs Naylor revealed that each athlete is given 3 full suitcases full of kit that has been specially designed in collaboration with Adidas. "There are lots of different body types and shapes to think about and we have an army of seamstresses who make alterations". She explained why the ParalympicsGB team don't wear much white as it is not a good colour for visually impaired athletes and would also quickly get dirty in wheelchair races. Mrs Naylor finished her talk by asking the children to think about how they could be inclusive to disabled people in their daily lives, such as in their use of language, and possibly playing a part in improving access issues for disabled people in their future careers - perhaps designing buildings and cities to be step-free!

It was great to see some of the Adidas kit in person and how it has changed since the Rio Games. The children were also excited to handle a London 2012 Silver Paralympic Medal and a few were also able to hold the Paris 2024 Paralympic Torch.

We would like to thank Mrs Naylor for giving us such an engaging talk and we hope to welcome her back in the future to hear about the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Games in Italy and, of course, LA 2028!