Living paintings caught up with Paralympic cycling champion, Sophie Thornhill. And she explained about her diet and training schedule.
In terms of training. I’m a sprinter so we, we don’t spend a huge amount of time actually riding our bikes because we have a lot more areas we need to target. So we we’re spending a lot of time in the gym, which allows us to get big and strong, um, which allows us to produce more power when we ride our bikes Don’t get me wrong, we still ride our bikes more than we’re in the gym. You know, we’re, we’re on the track two, three times a week and then out on the road as well. So that can involve some short sprints efforts from 60 metres up to 500 metres, and then even further in some box. And then in terms of food, we, there’s not a strict diet, everything in moderation. We’re still a treat. We just need to make sure that we’re getting enough protein. And so then we recover from our training sessions and our muscles can recover, tissue doesn’t break down too easily. In terms of carbohydrates, we don’t eat a huge amount of carbohydrates. Cause as sprinters, unfortunately, we don’t do a lot. So we’re seen as a little bit lazy, so we’re not allowed too many carbs, which is a shame cause I love bread, but yeah, not in terms of diet it’s everything in moderation and you’ll be fine.

Hi I’m Jo Whiley and I’m a huge fan of the man that we’re going to talk about today and that is David Bowie. 1969 is remembered by most of humanity for one thing; the first time man landed on the Moon. The Apollo space mission was a very big deal. At schools across the land children had their lessons cancelled so that they could watch the Moon landings; people stayed home from work and everyone gathered around televisions to witness this monumental first for humanity.

* Moon landing

David Bowie was born David Jones, in Brixton, South London. He changed his surname to Bowie and in his early career was a folksy type, strumming his acoustic guitar whilst sitting cross-legged on stage. In 1969 he released an album which included Space Oddity, a track which was inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi film classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, which you can find out about in our Film book. It was released as a single to coincide with the televising of the Moon landings but was slow to take off in the pop charts due to the refusal of the BBC to play it until the crew of Apollo 11 were safely back on Earth. It’s about an astronaut called Major Tom who was being launched into space. The words are quite odd, but strangely poetic. The original version of the song is very different to the sound clip that you’ve just heard. The orchestration is much sparser so his voice seems to float as if through space.

* Music: original Space Oddity by David Bowie

Hi, my name is Ade Adepitan, a Paralympian and TV presenter. The first time I really, um, decided that I wanted to be an Olympian or Paralympian because I didn’t know about, um, Paralympians back then or an elite athlete let’s say, it was when I watched the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, and I was completely blown away by just the size of the event. The, the amazing, incredible athletes. I was suddenly inspired by people like Daley Thompson. Sebastian Coe, Edwin Moses. And to see that these guys were the best in the world at what they do, it was just fantastic. I used to be so into it that when I was watching the games at home on my sofa, I’d close my eyes. And as soon as the starter gun would go off, I’d start pumping my arms and imagining that I was there with thousands of people cheering me on in the stadium. And I just wanted to be the best athlete that I could possibly be. But another reason that, and probably the real reason why I wanted to take up sport and become a great athlete is because sport made me independent. It meant that I didn’t have to rely on anybody to do anything. If I wanted to go to the shops, I was fit enough to get there myself. If I wanted to go to school, if I wanted to carry stuff around, I didn’t have to rely on anyone because sport made me strong and it made me confident and it made me, I was able to communicate with anybody that I wanted to communicate with. And one of the greatest things about sport is that every day you can be better than you were the day before, because when you play sport, you train and then the next day you train and you can look back and say, I did it better than I did the day before. I think that is an amazing gift. That’s why I love sport.