Wheelchair rugby star tackles sport barriers

Sonny Fletcher, from Cliffe, near Rochester, features in the latest This Girl Can ad campaign to inspire women and girls to get active

A wheelchair rugby player is fronting a national campaign to highlight the barriers disabled women face in accessing sport.

Sonny Fletcher, 22, from Cliffe near Rochester, features in the latest This Girl Can advert, which aims to challenge stereotypes and redefine how women in sport are portrayed in the media.

She plays for Harlequins Rugby, which provides chairs for players, but said she was recently quoted £8,000 for her own – a cost she described as "prohibitive" for most people.

"For able-bodied people, it's like going for a run with a pair of shoes that fit compared to a second-hand pair that don't – the only difference is several thousand pounds," she said.

The latest campaign - We Like The Way You Move - aims specifically at under-represented groups in sport, such as women of colour and pregnant women

She added: "I think a lot of people have this belief that sports chairs and even normal chairs are funded by the Government and that's just not the case."

As well as cost, Sonny, who travels 90 minutes each way to get to Harlequins, said a lack of local clubs can also be a barrier.

"I know loads of people who want to get into sport, but it's just the price and how far away the clubs are.

"So many things make it not accessible for so many people," she added.

Sonny is one of 13 street-cast athletes to feature in the This Girl Can campaign, which focuses on groups of people under-represented in sports media.

Accompanying the campaign, which is now in its tenth year, is AI analysis of 4,000 public photos from sports and leisure facilities in England, sourced via Google Maps.

It found that women with visible disabilities were "almost entirely missing", pregnancy was "practically erased", and women of colour were "virtually invisible".

Sonny was recently fitted for a specialist rugby chair, and the cost was around £8,000, one of many things that make sport inaccessable for some people

Kate Dale, director of marketing at This Girl Can and Sport England, said: "Over the last decade, This Girl Can has inspired over four million women to get active, but while inequality persists our work is not done.

"We're here for the women left behind. Together we can change the picture of what women getting active looks like."

Sonny was 18 when she started to use a wheelchair due to a genetic condition, and wants to show people that "it doesn't mean you can't do anything".

She added: "Having sport has really helped me accept it [using a wheelchair].

"I was 18 and went into this club and there were people so much older than me, living their lives, working jobs, and I realised 'oh, it's not all over, this is fine'."