By Matt Wright

As part of Great Britain’s gold medal-winning wheelchair rugby team at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, Kylie Grimes knows how far funding from The National Lottery can take an athlete.

The National Lottery is celebrating 30 years of investment into para sport during this summer’s Games in Paris, with their transformational impact having helped expose people to para sport across Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Wheelchair rugby has become one of the main attractions at the Paralympics since debuting in Atlanta in 1996, with The National Lottery’s help playing a huge role in establishing Great Britain as one of the sport’s leading nations.

Grimes, who retired last year, said: “National Lottery funding just helps for years and years and years.

“It has an impact on the amount of training you can do, the number of competitions you can do abroad, and this is for the elite team, although they help at grassroots level as well.

“But for elite athletes it helps with everything because you can go to training camps more, you can go to competitions more and ultimately you end up with the medals.

“For me, personally, it’s been huge. During my career I played wheelchair rugby, and I competed in athletics in the 2016 Games in Rio, and I had National Lottery funding my whole career, which is incredible.”

Grimes was speaking at Leicester Tigers Wheelchair Rugby Club, where she took part in a session with members from across the club that showcased the skills and intricacies of the sport.

One of her former coaches from ParalympicsGB, Rob Tarr, is the club chairman and a three-time Paralympian who competed in 1996, 2000 and 2004 at a time when National Lottery funding was first being introduced.

Tarr said: “National Lottery funding has made a huge change. When I went to Atlanta in ’96 we basically had to fund everything ourselves.

“If you were a talented athlete and you couldn’t afford to play for your country, it was quite brutal because you couldn’t play.

“Then in 2000, when we went to Sydney, National Lottery funding came in and it completely changed things.

(Image: Getty Images for The National Lottery)

“That allowed us to bring staff into the sport, like psychologists, analysts, so we had a team behind us, and it funded athletes with their training and their equipment, which in this sport is expensive.”

Tom Folwell combines playing with his role as club secretary at Leicester Tigers Wheelchair Rugby Club and has competed for Great Britain in the Invictus Games.

He has seen the impact National Lottery funding has had on clubmates Gavin Walker, Jamie Stead, Kieran Flynn and Nick Cummings, who are all competing at the Paris Paralympics.

Folwell said: “It’s done a lot for the GB guys because it allows them to concentrate on the sport a lot more, with the funding they receive.

“For us as a club, we’ve started a junior rugby programme that The National Lottery has funded as well, so in the next 12 months we should get a few junior players coming through, thanks to the money we’ve received.”

Thanks to National Lottery players our Olympic & Paralympic athletes are supported to live their dreams and make the nation proud. With more than £30M a week raised for Good Causes, The National Lottery has enabled Great Britain to become a global sporting force and has provided more opportunities for people inspired by athletes to take part in sport. For details visit www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk