What does a gold medal-winning Paralympian do after he’s just finished setting a world record in a sport he’s only been playing for just over a year? He crowd surfs in his wheelchair over the revellers at Meredith Music Festival and takes the stage to rap a verse with Ghostface Killah, that’s what.
In a series of badass accomplishments that will leave you feeling seriously unproductive, Australian Paralympian Dylan Alcott completed a record-breaking tennis marathon on Friday, playing in his wheelchair continuously for 24 hours at Melbourne Park to raise money for the Starlight Foundation and Variety Children’s Charity.
If that’s enough to make you feel seriously lazy, the 23-year-old, who was one of the members of the gold-winning Australian wheelchair basketball squad at the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing, China, has only been playing tennis for just over a year and has already risen to a world-class level.
“I just did it to get a bit of a tan and get a bit fitter, and here I am a year later sitting at world number two,” Alcott told the ABC. And what does Alcott listen to before each competition to get him pumped up enough to kick ass on the court? Protect Ya Neck by the Wu-Tang Clan.
It was that very track, specifically Method Man’s famously vitriolic verse, that Alcott was soon spitting before a crowd of thousands at Meredith. “So what better way to unwind after 24 hours of world record breaking tennis than rapping your favourite verse, with one of your favourite rappers from your favourite group of all time,” he wrote on Facebook.
And as readers can see in the incredible footage below, Alcott did a pretty damn good job of it. “I can’t believe I got the verse out perfectly,” Alcott told The Herald Sun. “Sport is my comfort zone. Rapping on stage is not.” Comfortable or not, Alcott got major props from the crowd and Ghostface Killah himself.
Alcott was born with a tumour on his spinal cord, which kept him “in and out of hospital” when he was growing up. Despite the obvious adversity, Alcott says he’s committed to challenging the status quo for, and general perceptions of, people with disabilities.
