In this episode of Martial Attitude Voice, we sit down with Jason Smyth, the Irish sprint legend often called the world’s fastest Paralympian. Born with Stargardt’s disease, Jason has competed at the highest levels of both para and non-para athletics, holding world records in the 100m and 200m sprints despite relying almost entirely on blurred peripheral vision. Jason shares how sport became both an escape and a path to self-acceptance, why he once struggled to embrace para sport, and how he learned to “feel” his performance when seeing it wasn’t an option. We also explore the power of touch exchange, the idea that movement, presence, and contact are their own language, and how it shaped Jason’s journey on the track and on Dancing with the Stars. Whether you’re interested in adaptive sport, coaching, or the deeper experience of living in a visually driven world, Jason’s perspective is a reminder that our limitations often reveal unexpected strengths.
Follow Jason Smyth on LINKEDIN.
Mathias Alberton (00:03)
Hello everyone, this is Mathias Alberton. I'm the creator of Martial Attitude. This is Martial Attitude Voice. You know, we explore how the concept of discipline applies in different sports domains. And we have, let's say, a focus of attention on visual impairment because Martial Attitude is creating this training bespoke for visually impaired and blind people to create a better sense of confidence, of posture, a bit of fitness as well. We run the workshops every Sunday afternoon in central London. Today I am joined by Jason Smyth. He's an Irish legend, he's a sprint legend whose remarkable career has redefined pretty much what's possible in Parathletics.
He's born with Stargardt's disease, which is, just to clarify, characterized by macular degeneration. It can start early in life and it results in progressive loss of vision acuity, which is uncorrectable with glasses. So he's legally blind and Jason was competing in the T13 classification. We will ask about this to him in a moment.
Just to give you an idea, International Paralympic Committee and the BBC described him as the fastest Paralympian of all And he holds the records both in the 100 and 200 meters and he has earned multiple Paralympic gold medals. Most recently, he has shown a very different side of his talent. he has won Dancing with the Stars Ireland. Jason. Thank you very much for having the time to join us How do you do?
Jason Smyth (01:47)
Hello, hello. It's good to be here and thanks for the opportunity to join you. So looking forward to it.
Mathias Alberton (01:53)
Yep, we met at ISAPA 2025, was the International Symposium of Adaptive Sport Activities. You were keynote speaker there. And of course, you have explained a bit your journey through sport, your remarkable career as a sport person. And I introducing you the TE13 classification.
Can you spend a couple of words just to clarify what that is?
Jason Smyth (02:21)
Yeah, absolutely. So often within para sport, the first with the letter T is for track. So for example, swimming would be S if it was something in the field like long jump, it would be F. So the letter often reflects what the sport is. And then the number is dependent on your disability or impairment. So within the 100 meters or on the track.
The visually impaired categories would be T11, T12, and T13. And they're separated really by the level of vision. So T11 would be completely blind. T12 then would be kind of from, this is me just talking roughly here, that kind of one to 5 % vision. And then T13 would roughly be about five to 10 % vision.
Mathias Alberton (03:14)
Just to make a practical connection for people listening, the kind of vision you have allows you to see blurred all or you just see some depth but up to a certain point?
Jason Smyth (03:25)
Yeah. For me, and again, this is the thing with all visual impairments, depending on the condition, it obviously impacts in different ways where somebody may have tunnel vision. I'm the nearly the opposite of that. So the center part of my eye would be completely blind. And then as a result, I have to use my peripheral vision. So I would have a reasonable field of vision. So, be able to see a lot of things around, but they're all extremely blurry. for example, taking out the middle part being blind, if somebody ever tries to, and it's not as common now, takes a picture while the camera is moving, often you can see colors or the image, or the image is very blurry, but you can't necessarily see the detail. So it's nearly something like that.
Mathias Alberton (04:21)
Of course, thinking about the 100 meter sprint and thinking about that you're running something like 10.20, you managed to run. What's the fastest you run?
Jason Smyth (04:33)
So my best time in the 100 meters was 10.22. And actually that was 2012, just before. So I was actually trying to make the Olympics in London and the qualification standard for the Olympics was 10.18. So was right on the verge of making the Olympics at the kind of height of my career, which was on or is uncommon for a para-athlete to kind of make that bridge across into non-para sport.
Mathias Alberton (05:05)
Was there a moment when your sight loss felt, let's say, most challenging? How did you learn to navigate the environment when everyone else relying on visual cues instead?
Jason Smyth (05:14)
Yeah. It's a good question. I was diagnosed with this eye condition around seven or eight. I don't know or remember anything different. I think reflecting back, probably the toughest times was in around those early stages of being a child and a teenager. Now, I didn't start athletics till I was 15. I think the challenge that most people face. it's learning to accept the situation you're in and accept the challenges you face. I feel it took me a while to do that. I think sport was the vehicle in which I was able to do that. But as a teenager, I was probably somewhat ashamed or trying to, actually, I was just constantly trying to hide that I couldn't see very well. I didn't want to stand out to be any different, seen any different, treated any different. And therefore that was that period of learning to accept the situation. I kind of him and had that I even want to get into para sport because of that exact piece. The moment I would get into into para sport, that would be the minute I would start nearly shedding a light a little bit more on what I could and couldn't see. And you got to remember, so that was, I got involved in para sports in 2005, like where the para sport, the Paralympics and disabilities is seen as today is so different than what it was then.
Mathias Alberton (07:09)
Because what you just said comes to mind a question. You mentioned that course, know, sport was of great aid for you to navigate your early years. And I am, I was thinking, is that because you actually kind of played hide and seek in the sport. because as long as you were in the sport, you did have not to deal with the issue outside of the sport. So the more hours you spent on the so you were not spending them, let's say in other environments and you could just focus out all the noise. And that was the great help or it was just because the sport you did have something to do that actually reasonably was good enough for you not to have or to feel any disparities with your peers at the time?
Jason Smyth (08:06)
Yeah, it's probably a combination of both. So I was always somebody who was ⁓ sporty regardless, let's say even though I had limited vision, I would have been on the skill football team, I would have played like I was somebody who naturally picked up sport pretty good at it.
I won basically all of my sports days from primary school through secondary school in the hundred meters other than a couple of years. So I was always somebody who was naturally good in sport and therefore I think my vision didn't set me apart as being any different. Well, I love sport, but that was one of the pieces that I really like I connected was that, regardless, vision wasn't really barrier to what I could do. Now, the reality is over time I learned my vision isn't a barrier to anything I can do. But sport was the place that I feel like I gained that confidence in myself and what I can achieve. And actually, the barriers, as I mentioned, are what we put on ourselves personally not what others do.
Mathias Alberton (09:26)
At the technical level I imagine that racing requires an incredible level of spatial awareness I cannot imagine anything else than running, you know, a certain time, a certain feeling. You don't run really into space, you run, I guess, into a physiological state of yourself. So what strategy, senses do you rely on?
Jason Smyth (09:59)
It's an interesting one again is, like reflecting back, a question I'm often asked is, for example, how much more difficult is it for somebody with limited vision to feel vision? And the reality is I know no and I think we all as people and humans have this ability to adapt to the situation that we're in and find ways to do it. There isn't one sense or one way you can run down the track fast, you learn to adapt in the situation, which I think is, an incredible power that we all have. And it's often not until we're forced into situations that we have to figure out a different way about it. But my coach, for example, have always said, and I think there's, there is a huge skills around coaching the individual in front of you. So he would have often said to me, non partially sighted athletes, there's an element. He could coach them on what they see. When you think of feedback, feedback, where for me, his emphasis was actually a lot on how I felt through the movement, feeling the positions and feeling what right and wrong is. Now the challenge with that is that's often a bit of a slower process. But over time, I think that's something that's probably you're able to sustain because you come deeper connected to how you feel and what that's supposed to feel like at different pieces of the race and through training.
So, as I said, there's not one right way to run fast on the track. There's not one right way to prepare to run fast. You only have to look at, let's say at a hundred meter final. If you're in the warmup area, you would find all the athletes are doing different warmups and different approaches. And I think regardless of you've got a vision impairment or not, there's just not one right way to do it. Therefore you learn to adapt to what works for you.
Mathias Alberton (12:07)
I think what you just said about feeling rather than seeing performance something that really resonates with what I'm trying to do here at Martial Attitude Training for visually impaired and blind people. up to your coach at the time the most complex and compelling element of what I'm trying to do at Martial Attitude Training is really to verbalize, to translate, to understand each one individual training with me what they do and what they should or could do differently translating how the movement should feel for them how it should feel better this angle rather than that angle. That's why I would ask to you, the most annoying thing that usually people give for granted and you still have to find your way around it?
Jason Smyth (13:09)
Yeah, even just to go back there to your last point as well, I think looking at it from a visually impaired coach athlete perspective, what becomes so important as you're talking and touching on there is the feedback from the coach and how the coach communicates to the athlete. I find I probably relied on that even more than somebody who wasn't visually impaired and therefore that relationship.
Coaches skills and abilities become even more important to help a vision impaired athlete develop to whatever their potential is. Your other question there around probably the thing that I find just hardest is, because I'm not completely blind, I don't have or need a cane, I don't need a dog, and therefore I walk past you looking like every other person on the street. a lot of times then, don't necessarily understand what I can't see. So you could walk past me and wave at me I wouldn't see you waving at me. I wouldn't see you looking at me. But yet you could feel he's being ignorant or arrogant or he's just ignoring me. So there's an element I find of with people, I constantly rely on them to say hello to me rather than me say hello to them, which sometimes I just think can be bit more difficult in connections, relationships, especially as people that you don't know as much. People just assume that you can see what they can see because you look like everybody else.
Mathias Alberton (14:53)
And again, at Martial Attitude, we talk about what I have called named touch exchange. That is the idea that the physical presence, contact, movement are a language of their own. So there is an idea of touching the table, which is touch, the sense of touch, and then there is touching and being touched by another person. So there is a contact, physical contact in social context and I call that touch exchange. Has your visual impairment shaped let's say how you connect with others through touch whether in sport or in daily
Jason Smyth (15:33)
Honestly, haven't reflected on that question enough. I would say has to have. I think for sure when one sense has been reduced, other senses become heightened. I would say out of my other senses, my hearing is probably the one that has become heightened even more than anything else.
So I think touch has to have as well. And I think the other piece, is never just simple around visual impairments, depending on your level of vision, depends also on your potential reliance on certain senses more than others. So I feel like if I was completely blind, touch would become even stronger again because the vision aspect has nearly completely disappeared where I have a little bit of vision that means I possibly get away with not having to heighten some of the other senses as much.
Mathias Alberton (16:46)
Let's say when you join Dance with the Stars, ⁓ dancing involves a lot of touch. And as you just said before, the default position of people is to talk to you, not to touch you, let's say, or rather you are expecting someone to talk to you order to trigger a conversation, to know each other, to have a connection. And instead, for instance, in dancing, you skip the conversation, you go straight to touch. Was there a difficulty there to adapt to this kind of ⁓ touching communication versus the usual default verbal communication?
Jason Smyth (17:33)
I don't, I don't think so. I think, and again, I think that's a reflection of probably the relationship myself and my dance partner picked up really quickly. Again, even from a sporting, as you kind of, I'm thinking about touch here in a different aspect, like, my coach, let's say in sport would have, let's say if we're looking to move my arm positions, touch my arms and move to where he felt where right needs to be. So there probably was an element of getting me to right positions in sport that I didn't necessarily first reflect on. And therefore moving into dancing, again, similar elements of what I talked about in sport, there was an element of having to learn to feel what's right. So dancing, constantly people are looking in the mirror to see how they're moving. And that gives them the feedback where for me that wasn't possible. And therefore it was just as we're talking about there in sport again in the dance, there was an element of me feeling what's right. And often actually that was driven by an element of touch from the coach or in the situation. and the dance partner to put you in the right position so you start to feel what right and wrong is. I haven't necessarily thought about it in that way, but think it probably in sports, with me in sport, it was me as the individual having to run down the track on a race.
So it was you only where with dance, you're out there performing and it's you as a couple. And therefore, as you're alluding to, the element of touch actually becomes even greater and stronger. And as we're dancing, feeling of a pushing or pulling and that pressure and being reactive to that certainly is something that was a little different, but I felt with the physical aspect of what I had to do in sport, I felt the ability to adapt to it quickly. The hard piece was actually learning to dance.
Mathias Alberton (19:57)
I have one last question. It doesn't want to be provocative. What's the worst advice you have ever been given?
Jason Smyth (20:07)
That's a hard question to answer. I've probably blocked out whatever the worst advice was. I don't know. I don't know if it's advice, but like the advice that I would give that I feel like I learned is, and maybe this is back to the point around being partially sighted, is often, actually in society as well, people are trying to fit into a certain box or a certain way or a certain way of running down the track or a certain way of dancing and actually there isn't a certain way of doing anything and therefore it's embracing who you are your uniqueness, whatever that may be, if that's being partially sighted, is actually a strength rather than a weakness. I think it's about shifting the way that we look at what we can and can't do.
Not really bad advice I got, but it was just one thing that kind of reflected there.
Mathias Alberton (21:12)
Absolutely. Jason, thank you very much for your time. It was really nice to have a chat with you. Thank you very much for sharing with us your insights. And thank you very much to everyone who has been listening to the podcast. As you know, Martial Attitude is delivering workshops for visually impaired and blind people to gain more confidence in touching, being touched by other people in social settings to get a better posture, to get a bit more fit. It's fun. You can come along with a sighted partner, family member, friend, whoever that might be and if you want more information you find them of course on the website in the description here below and if you have any question as usual you keep in touch.