\n<\/p>\n
Atkinson was identified as autistic and with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) aged 10, and six years later it was confirmed he had cerebral palsy.<\/p>\n
“I’m more than just a label,” he insisted. “I am my own person and even with them you can achieve anything you want.” <\/p>\n
He describes his experience of being neurodivergent as both a blessing and a curse.<\/p>\n
“It’s a blessing because you can get super focus and special interests, so one special interest for a few months could be aerodynamics or numbers or sprinting,” Atkinson explained.<\/p>\n
“You obsessively focus on that specific thing until you have perfected it.”<\/p>\n
Atkinson found school challenging and said he was bullied for playing Para-football, clips of which surfaced on social media at the time.<\/p>\n
“You do get those certain few who take it to the extreme,” he said.<\/p>\n
“They will have something against you completely because you’re autistic or different and, for whatever reason, they don’t like that.”<\/p>\n
PE lessons were also particularly problematic.<\/p>\n
He was not picked for teams initially because it was perceived that his autism would stop him from being any good.<\/p>\n
Atkinson said: “After a few years they worked out ‘oh, he has some talent’ so then they would pick you on their team. It’s not very nice.”<\/p>\n
Despite the difficulties, Atkinson stuck to his love of sport, eventually finding Para-cycling.<\/p>\n
“I think a lot of neurodiverse kids struggle with sports,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I think if schools were to focus on supporting those kids with additional needs to help them do sport, it would massively improve them.”<\/p>\n
Atkinson is clear that being neurodivergent can help in making it to elite sport, specifying a “special ability to super focus or hyper fixate”.<\/p>\n
And it was also physical activity that taught him how to manage difficult times.<\/p>\n
“Sport was there as my sort of freedom, my outlet,” he said. <\/p>\n
“If I had a bad day at school, I’d go play football or run around in the garden or ride my bike and that made me happy and feel free.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n