Paralympics: Niko Kappel out to add to his medal collection

My father used tell me: "When you grow up, you'll have to work," Niko Kappel told DW. That was over 20 years ago; the Paralympian is now 29 but still stands at just 1.41 meters (4'7").

"I stayed small, but I still have to work."

Although he is a qualified bank clerk, Kappel is now a fulltime track-and-field athlete with sports club VfB Stuttgart, which is closely associated with the Bundesliga club of the same name.

In May of this year, the shot putter won the world title in the F41 class, one of the sub-classes for small athletes, at the Para Sport World Championships in Japan, for the second time since 2017. In his golden toss in Kobe, the ball landed at a distance of 14.23 meters.

But Kappel was not satisfied with his performance, as two weeks earlier he had improved his own world record by eight centimeters to 15.07 meters.

"That was something very special for me and my team," he said. "It makes me want more."

'I wasn't the best header of the ball'

As a young boy, the 29-year-old would never have dreamed that he would one day be one of the best shot-putters in the world.

"My life was all about football, there was nothing else for me," he recalled. "I was a striker…  It was a very good time."

Back then, he learned that being a bit shorter than the others wasn't a bad thing.

"Of course, I wasn't the best header of the ball on the team, but I took care of other things."

He first became interested in the Paralympics while watching the 2008 Games in Beijing.

Since then, he has developed a love-hate relationship with the shot put.

"It fascinates me to try to perfect a movement so that I can transfer the maximum speed from my movement to the shot (ball)," he said.

'We can have an impact on society'

For Kappel, however, his sport is not merely measured in centimeters or about winning or losing. He believes that sport can make an important contribution to society, which is why he spends much of his free time visiting schools to speak to children about the values of sport.

"Regardless of whether you are a person with a disability or not – you learn to be considerate of other people, you learn to work as part of a team and to treat each other with respect," Kappel said.

"These are hugely important virtues in society."

Kappel also uses his platform as an elite athlete of small stature to work to break down prejudice towards people with disabilities.

"I see it as our job to show people that they don't have to be afraid of dealing with us," he said, noting that the issue of inclusion has become very political, making people increasingly afraid of getting into trouble by inadvertently saying the wrong thing.

"Am I allowed to address this? Can I ask what it's like to be smaller or will I be pilloried for this?”

Kappel believes Paralympic sport has a positive message for the rest of the word.

"We are just like everyone else. We want to be the best, regardless of whether we have a leg or no leg or half a leg or are just a little smaller than others. It makes no difference. It's the time or the distance that counts," he said.

"I believe that if we can communicate this and start talking about the sport and not about the type of disability, then we can definitely have an impact on society."

Going for a third Paralympic medal

Kappel is a positive person with an infectious personality – which is a big reason he now has more than 250,000 followers on TikTok.

However, his prime concern remains his performance in the throwing circle. At the Paralympics in Paris, Kappel's stated goal is to bring home a third Paralympic meal – to go along  with his gold from Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and bronze in Tokyo in 2021.

This article was originally published in German.