# How to Actually Support a Para Athlete *By Kai Colless · 2025-11-10 · 7 min read* > A practical, honest guide for the people in a para athlete's life who want to help — and aren't sure how. I get asked this question a lot — by parents, partners, coaches, sponsors, and journalists. How do I support someone going through this? It's a great question. Here's the most useful answer I can give. ## Start by treating them like the person they were The single biggest thing the people around me got right was continuing to treat me like Kai. Not a patient. Not a story. Not a "brave inspiration." Just the same person they'd known before, with a body that worked differently. That sounds obvious. It is genuinely rare. If you've been reading articles about disability etiquette and feeling unsure of yourself — relax. Most of the time the right move is also the obvious one. Talk normally. Make jokes you'd have made before. Don't lower expectations. Don't perform sensitivity. ## Listen more than you reframe When someone is in the middle of something hard, well-meaning people often jump straight to the "silver lining." Don't. Sit with the hard part for a while. Let them name what's actually difficult before you reach for what's good about it. The reframing tends to land better when it's their idea. > "At least it wasn't worse" is rarely the comfort it sounds like in your head. ## Practical help beats emotional help most days Especially in the early phase, the most loved people in my life were the ones who quietly handled logistics. Lifts to physio. Help with house modifications. Researching adaptive equipment. Coordinating visitors so I wasn't doing the same conversation eight times a day. None of it was emotional labour. All of it was support. ## If you're family Trust the athlete to know what they're capable of. The instinct to protect is enormous and good — but it can quietly become the most limiting force in their recovery if you let it run unchecked. Ask, don't assume. Offer, don't insist. And give yourself permission to be sad about what's changed; you don't have to be unrelentingly upbeat for them to feel supported. ## If you're a coach Don't dial down the standard. Coach the athlete you have, with the same precision and honesty you'd bring to any other athlete. Ask what's changed mechanically — what range of movement, what compensations, what the new baseline is — and design from there. The worst para coaching I've seen is the kind that confuses kindness with low expectations. And learn the sport's adaptive division properly before you start coaching it. The judging criteria, equipment norms, and competition pathway are different. Coaching adaptive surfing on stand-up surfing principles is like coaching beach volleyball with indoor volleyball drills — overlapping but not the same. ## If you're a brand or sponsor Three things, said as plainly as I can. 1. **Don't make the disability the whole story.** The athlete's wins, training, personality and craft are all more interesting than their diagnosis. Lead with the sport. 2. **Pay properly.** Para athletes are routinely offered "exposure" deals that wouldn't be offered to non-disabled athletes at the same level. Pay them for their work the same way you'd pay anyone else. 3. **Commit beyond a single campaign.** The brands that have meant the most to me are the ones who showed up before I was a world champion and stayed after the news cycle moved on. ## If you're a journalist The phrase "wheelchair-bound" is dated. So is "confined to a wheelchair." Wheelchairs are mobility — they free people, they don't bind them. "Uses a wheelchair" or "wheelchair user" is fine. Beyond that, ask the athlete how they describe themselves and follow their lead. And — this is gentle — please go beyond the diagnosis-paragraph in the second paragraph. We have other things to say. ## If you're a fan Show up. Watch the events. Comment on the surfing, not just the comeback. Bring your kids to the local adaptive day. Push for accessible infrastructure at your local beach. The thousand small acts of normalising this stuff add up to far more than the occasional viral post. ## The summary The best support is the kind that helps the person keep being themselves. The worst kind quietly turns them into a project. — Kai. Palm Beach.