Para athlete who is making a huge impact - on and off the judo mat
SILVER MEDALLIST POWELL, 32, RECOGNISED AT AWARDS NIGHT
A TEAM GB Judo Paralympian from Loughborough has won a major award for helping to make combat sports more accessible.
Dan Powell was announced as the Social Impact Award winner at UK Sport’s PLx Awards 2023.
Born with a rare genetic eye condition known as Stargardt disease, the 32-year-old visually-impaired judoka has used his disability, combined with his international sporting career, to enhance opportunity within the combat sports community.
Powell got into the sport by following in the footsteps of his twotime Paralympic bronze medal-winning father Terry Powell.
Since entering the British Judo setup, he has gone on to achieve a silver at the World Championships in 2022 and European silver this year, and has become the most recent athlete representative on the International Blind Sports Federation Athlete Council.
In 2019, Powell founded his charity, GNR8 Academy, based in Loughborough, which aims to help children from low socio-economic backgrounds, as well as those with visual impairments like himself, to get into combat sports.
Powell, through his charity, is aiming to make the sport he loves more accessible for young people from all walks of life where they might not have the opportunity otherwise.
GNR8 offers classes and holiday camps for children on a part or even fully-funded basis – dependant on the financial situation of the child’s family.
The charity is also working to support with the recent government Get Active strategy, striving to get over one million children across the country more active and engaged in sport by 2030.
Powell said: “I always talk about putting different hats on.
“So when I’m in the dojo I’ve got my judo hat on, when I’m in the gym I put my work hat on, and when I’m at home I have my Dad hat on.
“But without the team that I’ve got, the amazing people at British Judo, without all of these people around me helping me to spin all these plates, I would be lost without them.
“They help my world go round.” Powell joked: “I make the life of the staff at British Judo hell!
“I turn up on the mat and give the best performance that I can and that’s led to some amazing achievements in the last few years (if I do say so myself ), but I couldn’t do half the stuff I do without all the team in the background helping us get from A to B.
“Even today trying to logistically put together being here when we’re travelling to Japan at 6.30 tomorrow morning.
“It’s madness but we get because it’s what we love, passion, our sport.”
Powell added: “I grew up on a council estate in Liverpool and you know sport, especially performance sport, is not looked at, at all.
“Being given the opportunity to perform in my sport isn’t an opportunity I can give back but it’s an opportunity to enable young people to do the best they can and see all the benefits of sport that I have.”
The PLx Awards celebrated the high-performance sporting community in the UK and their contributions as an individual, team, sport, or event during 2023.
The winners were announced at an awards ceremony in Stratford-upon-Avon.
To find out more about the PLx Awards, hosted by UK Sport and powered by The National Lottery, visit: it done it’s our
HELPING HAND: Dan Powell with his award and, below, competing in the London 2012 Paralympic Games