I Get Up Again Paralympic Commercial

Paralympic champion Brian McKeever featured in Toyota'due south emotional Super Bowl ad

The Canadian vision dumb skier is the most decorated male cross-state Paralympian in history 13 Feb 2022

By IPC

Past his ain admission, Brian McKeever is not an emotional human. He says he normally keeps information technology "a trivial more zen", which may explain why he is the most decorated male Paralympian in the history of the ultra-tough Para Cantankerous-Land.

But now the life and career of him and his blood brother Robin is the bailiwick of a television commercial by Worldwide Paralympic Partner Toyota, that is being broadcast during Super Bowl 2022.

Brian was involved in the development of the ad and confesses that when he first watched it he was busy affectionate the mechanics of the spot. The next fourth dimension around it was a different story.

"When I watched it a second time it was with a friend of mine and we both cried. It was suddenly the reality of what information technology was showing. It's snippets of a life lived, and a career skied, and simply how much went into it. In that location's a lot of emotion packed into sixty seconds."

"Brothers" charts the deep bail that has built between the McKeever'southward. From their babyhood in Canada, a passion for cantankerous-country skiing and dealing with the loss of Brian's central vision at historic period 19 due to a genetic untreatable degenerative eye condition called Stargardt Macular Degeneration.

Legally blind - Brian has around 10 per cent vision - the damage did non stop him and Robin from continuing to train together. And that somewhen led to the brothers competing at the Salt Lake Metropolis 2002 Paralympic Winter Games, with Robin serving every bit Brian'south guide.

Ⓒ Getty Images

One matter that advert shows is that acquiring a disability has not held Brian back.

"Learning to live with a inability and getting beyond it…in the end, it wasn't the hardest thing in my life to transcend. I recollect that's considering I had good role models and because I was function of the Paralympic Move," says Brian.

"Not a twenty-four hours goes by where I don't think about the small challenges that I have, but I've never cursed it considering it's part of who I am, and I like who I am."

The life-affirming advertisement is the first played during the initial commercial break after kicking-off in the match between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Los Angeles Rams on 13 February.

With around 100 1000000 people watching in the United States alone, Brian admits to being a picayune daunted by those numbers, merely likewise appreciative of the chance it provides.

"Information technology's a wonderful opportunity to showcase Paralympic sport to the world, to a broader audience that perhaps hasn't always seen information technology earlier, or they don't know the story. I think any exposure we tin can get for the Paralympic Movement is welcome and information technology doesn't get any bigger than this."

This is not the first occasion Toyota has featured a Paralympian in the most coveted of advertising slots, in fact it's the fourth time in vii years. Respectively in 2015, 2018 and 2021, Amy Purdy, Lauren Woolstencroft and Jessica Long have all had the 'Big Game' handling.

Brian has been friends with Lauren since Salt Lake and knew that if Toyota treated the McKeever's story with the same respect equally they treated Lauren's, so not merely would information technology be a wonderful legacy piece, just it would serve to brainwash those with and without a disability.

"Nosotros volition never understand the impacts that we have, merely by being who nosotros are every bit humans, as Paralympians, every bit athletes," explains Brian. "Representation matters. We had that in our ain family. Our dad Nib too had Stargardt's, just he led a pretty normal life. He was a concrete educational activity instructor and taught us everything that dads normally teach their sons.

"But not everyone has that representation, and adverts like this not only develop an understanding for kids growing up with disabilities or acquiring them, but also on the broader lodge. Information technology normalises living with disabilities, and within that how we are treated."

Ⓒ Getty Images

Brian won 17 medals over 5 Paralympic Winter Games including an impressive thirteen golds to go along with twenty world titles. Beijing 2022 will yet exist his last.

The 42-year-old admits that 20 years of aristocracy competition have taken their toll on him physically, but that Para sport has changed his life beyond compare.

"The reality of sport is it's very, very hard. The Olympics and the Paralympics is a very exclusive club. It's very difficult to go to be world champion, to be Paralympic champion, there's non very many people that always get to do that.

"But Para sport gave me the opportunity to be a professional athlete and to follow that dream. I but wanted to exist a skier and I have been at present. For 20 plus years I've travelling internationally and coming together great people.

"I've been going to wonderful places and having all these astonishing experiences. I've led a very rich life in that sense."

And what does Brian hope that people take from the advert?

"That it's from humble beginnings to big dreams. What you see in the advert truly epitomises Toyota'south Starting time Your Impossible," he says, before adding that all of us have potential.

"Nosotros don't necessarily know what the future volition bring, so it's just about starting, well-nigh going out, nearly having fun and doing whatever the activeness is it that you like.

"And then you focus on those daily little processes, the enjoyment of what you're doing and just trying to become better a trivial at a time. We have no idea just how skilful we can exist."

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Source: https://www.paralympic.org/feature/paralympic-champion-brian-mckeever-featured-toyota-s-emotional-super-bowl-ad

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