Overlooked and underinvested - Matta's Marina Logacheva on the missed opportunity in disability sport

0:03Marina Logacheva:Hello and welcome to the Leaders Worth Knowing podcast, the sports industry show from leaders where we talk to the people worth knowing in the business of sport this week. I'm Leaders Editorial Director James Emmett and on the show this week is Marina Logacheva. Marina is the disability sports lead at the MATA Sports Marketing Agency. A keen amateur athlete, Marina was training for an Ironman in 2020 when she became a tetraplegic wheelchair user following a traumatic fall. Here in the UK, July is Disability Pride Month in which visibility, intersectionality and disabled leadership are all celebrated.

0:43Marina Logacheva:Those topics were on the agenda during my chat with Marina last week, as well as the huge opportunity that sports participation spaces are missing through a lack of focus on and catering to a potential disabled customer base. Approximately 25 % of the UK population reports having a disability. This equates to nearly 17 million people. Yet the public discourse around disability and the specific discourse around access to sport remains minimal. Here's hoping that will change. And here is Marina Logacheva. So Marina Logacheva is with us now in the studio. Marina, have I pronounced that okay? Yes, perfect.

1:28Marina Logacheva:Thank you, thank you. Marina, you and I were introduced a few weeks ago by a mutual friend, Alex Chamberlain. An unlikely mutual friend, I would suggest. I'm actually seeing him later today, Alex. Yeah. um and um in setting up the conversation that we had a few weeks ago Alex said oh I need to introduce you to um to Marina she's um the most inspirational person I've ever come across and I was like well okay well I will I will have to talk to her um and then we did uh and uh ultimately it's ended up in you um being here in the studio and we're going to talk about um disability, disability sport, and what you see as the overlooked and underexploited opportunity that there is in disabled sport.

2:24Marina Logacheva:Underinvested. Underinvested, of course. But first of all, the word on Alex Chamberlain, I mean, is he the most inspirational person you've ever come across? 100%. Marina, give us an idea of your story then. And where, I mean, Logacheva, that's a Russian name, right? It is. Okay. Where are you from and how did you get to be here today? I came to UK 20 years ago, straight from Moscow. And I've been working in marketing all this time. I got actually moved from Moscow to London because I was working for Kimberly Clark. and I've been a big sports fan all those 20 years. I actually became a sports fan when I moved to UK because there were so many people running in the park and I was like, what are those weirdos doing?

3:17Why everybody's running? And I just loved skiing at the time. I didn't really do anything apart from skiing. And I just got the bug. I got the bug and I started running and then I thought, well, I actually would love to do some swimming and then I started swimming and then cycling. So triathlons came my way.

3:37Marina Logacheva:Wow. And I, yeah, I loved sports and I was doing it always in parallel with my day-to-day job in marketing. Yeah. And five years ago, I accidentally broke my neck, became tetraplegic. So all four limbs are affected. I don't have a good grip and my legs are paralyzed. And I still ended up working in marketing. and I still wanted to do sports and that's how both worlds collided in my life and I started doing sports marketing. It's a quick run through. Yeah no very good and how did you come to work at MATA? That was actually after my injury and I was working for a part-time marketing role and that's how I ended up working in Mata because they were looking for a part-time marketing person at the time and it was one of those happy moments when you know you meet people that are very passionate about sports very passionate about doing the right thing and we met and during our conversation we actually had one of those revelation moments And like, yeah, we're looking for a marketing person, but actually we really want to talk more about disability sports.

5:01And you are really passionate about disability sports, Marina. We are also passionate about disability sports. Let's do something together. That's how the role of disability sport lead came into life because it was not existing before. And that's how it all started two and a bit years ago.

5:20Marina Logacheva:Okay. um so talk us through you you had the accident um and talk us through the recovery period from that and the role that sport which you'd come to sort of love at a participation level um you know since coming to the UK what role did sport play for you when you were adjusting to a new life and kind of recovering and motivating yourself to keep going? Yeah. Sport was always part of my life, as I shared. And I actually did my Ironman, my first big long distance triathlon in September. And then I broke my neck in December. So actually, I was at my peak. And I remember that I was laying in a hospital bed.

6:14And actually, I was thinking, can I get some rubber bands so I can do some exercises? And they were looking at me just like, is this for real? What is she doing? So I actually started thinking what I can do sport-wise while I was still in very early days after my injury. And it was very strange for me, unexpected for me, that it was just hard to find what I can do. And it was hard to find information, what's available and what adaptations I could have, like, where do I go for the sport club? How do I do things? Because as I mentioned, I don't have a good grip. So how do I grip to dumbbells? Or how do I steer a bike?

7:04Or what do I do? So for me, this experience of trying to find the sport to play was the first barrier. And I didn't really know why it was so difficult because I thought, well, it's kind of 2020 at the time, 2021, why it should be so difficult. And I remember at that time I was thinking, well, I'm not the first disabled person. Clearly, there should be something. And then the next thing I remember that somebody suggested hand cycling to me. and I tried to get in a bike. I found after multiple attempts a way where I can try a hand cycle. I couldn't grip to the handle, so they kind of wrapped some rubber bands around my hand so I can steer.

7:57I couldn't stop, so there was somebody running behind the bike and stopping me. So it's a proper...

8:01Marina Logacheva:It's better than running in front of you. Yeah, exactly. So I wouldn't go fast anyway. And I remember that feeling of, you know, being super free and being alive again, that I'm doing this. I am steering the wheel. I'm going forward. I'm doing something outside on the street. And this feeling was just amazing. And I felt like I just love doing this and I would like to do more of this. and this was something that kept motivating me every day to okay what where do i find the hand cycle where do i actually find the money for hand cycle which was 16 000 pounds for me it was again one of the other things that i learned that adaptations are pretty expensive and they're not funded by the government so people have to find the ways how to get through the charities or the nation's friends, family, or earn through work.

8:58So how do I actually train that I keep getting better? And it was helping me to actually, it was a period that is something that was driving me to wake up every day. So it was a big, big thing that was helping me to move forward with my rehabilitation, with my just feeling of being an athlete again, not disabled Marina on a wheelchair, but being marine as an athlete which are two different identities and i think that's that's amazing that sport can give you this athletic identity rather than just a disability identity which is fine as well um being disabled as an identity is you know is is good but being somebody who you want to be and not being defined by just this specific word um is completely different

9:49Marina Logacheva:story and i guess you'd already been sort of bitten by the bug of uh you know well fairly it's it's fairly extreme athleticism isn't it doing a triathlon so uh and i guess the idea of training in multiple different disciplines meeting milestones breaking pbs you you're you're in that kind of world anyway so the idea of okay here is a here is a channel for you to to funnel your um your sporting kind of enthusiasm and to have that different identity this is great how how did you find then great so so it's going to be so it's going to be hand cycling that's your that's your outlet how do you improve then without you know having to just do it over and over again How do you train for that discipline?

10:46It took me, wow, it was quite a challenge actually. It took me two years. First year I was just trying to figure out how do I get a bike? The one that's adapted that I can actually brake on my own, that I can steer, that I can change the gears. So it took a year to get the money, find the place where to buy the bike because I couldn't get it in the UK. so I found a factory in Italy so it was a whole journey to actually get

11:17Marina Logacheva:the equipment but then it was another journey of figuring out who can train me and understand my disability as well, understand that I have limitations with how many hours I can train, what's my heart rate, what's my power numbers because it's all different in a way and yeah it's it took time And I think that's actually one of the other things and other things that I figured out. And this is something that most people who never been in my shoes, in my wheelchair before, they don't understand that I have actually 24-7 care. It means that I just physically not able to do things on my own. Some things, majority of things.

12:07and it means that whatever i do sport wise i'm not it's just not my motivation on my willpower it also depends on people who are helping me to get on a bike get off the bike get to the place to cycle and i think sometimes when we watch paralympic games we are talking about like oh just such a motivational person inspirational person but we don't see that it's not just this person it's family it's carers it's whoever were helping this person as well um to actually be where this person is and it's actually even harder i suppose for people with disabilities to achieve things in sports because it doesn't just depend on us it depends on whether they meet somebody who is a good coach whether they meet somebody who would help them to get to the training location is training location accessible so it's so many more add-ons during this journey and i assume that if somebody is in a wheelchair for example that the only problem they have is that they can't walk but actually there are so many other additional layers to any other activity that the person does um being just being outside i actually recently posted a post on social media saying uh remembering Naomi Campbell you know she had an interview and she was saying well as a models we need to pay 10 000 pounds just to get out of bed and I thought you know yeah it's actually true similar yeah like as a disabled person people we just need to be able to um to get the same amount of attention yeah um just so because we do so many more things behind the scenes that the majority of people don't see.

13:58Marina Logacheva:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you've done an amazing job there of articulating the hidden challenges, right? I wonder what other challenges you found. For example, yeah, training elsewhere, not necessarily on the bike. The equipment that you might not think twice about if you were not disabled. The fact that I can just go to a gym and I can train any bit of my body, there is equipment. Yeah. And if I am training for something pretty hardcore, you know, I'll be able to find exactly what I need. No problem at all. Yeah. I wonder, how do you do that? It's a really good question. Yeah. Because it's hard.

14:43And I suppose my experience with going to the gym actually shaped quite a lot of what I'm doing now. Yeah. because I went to a very famous, very premium gym in a city center. And they did not have a ramp to get in. So it was a big step. I was like, okay. So I had somebody to lift me into this gym. And then I went to reception. It was my first time in the gym following the injury. And I was like already self-conscious, you know, like my body changed i was like six pack after my triathlon and suddenly i have a belly and like i just on a wheelchair so i look very different from a like a regular gym goer goer and i was at the reception they were like not paying attention to me for like 20 minutes and i'm like i'm kind of here um and then uh one after all of those um experiences um i still continued going to this gym as a member and i thought that well i would like to have a pt and pt said well um i have enough i have he said i have enough clients um i don't need any more clients so basically i don't want to train you and then all other pts said we don't really know what to do with you because you're in a wheelchair literally and i was like it's the most premium gym i'm i'm ready to pay money and pts are refusing to train me and the only equipment i could use in this gym is a skier this is like it was just bad i mean equipment wise obviously dumbbells but skier and dumbbells but you're paying the same amount of member fees yeah like everybody else it just doesn't feel right yeah so yeah it was quite a quite a challenge and i feel like again um and that that's something that led me to my um decision that i would like to study more inclusion in fitness gyms and create a little bit more awareness about disability for the industry

17:01Marina Logacheva:yeah and i'd love to come on to that because that's sort of um you know the the heartbeat of the work that you're doing at the moment is looking at inclusion in fitness gyms for, you know, for regular people, probably participating in sport. And I know that you found some areas of the world where there's a positive story and some areas of the world where there is a less positive story. But you said earlier, you know, half jokingly, but you're absolutely right. You're not the first disabled person in the world. There are millions and millions, hundreds of millions of disabled people, most of whom probably would like some kind of access to sporting endeavour.

17:4325 % in UK. Of course.

17:45Marina Logacheva:Quarter, like quarter. Yeah, quarter of the population has some sort of disability here. And your experience in this premium gym in the middle of London is probably not an unusual one, right, for disabled people. So tell us a little bit more about the work that you got stuck into around inclusion in gyms and yeah what you found in 2025 i applied to churchill fellowship um and it is a really cool organization and the whole purpose of their existence is to support projects that would benefit the uk society and they basically give grants to people to travel abroad, learn best practices and bring them back to UK.

18:35And I applied to them with a project of inclusion and fitness and they gave me the grant to travel to Australia, USA and Canada and explore what are the best practices of inclusion in the gyms and sports industry, which is absolutely epic. and I've so far been in Australia and I'm launching a report about this later on this year at Elevate which is a fitness conference talking about my experiences in Australia and first recommendations for the industry which I'm doing together with UK Active and SimSpa. UK Active is a membership body for the gyms and SimSpa is a membership body for personal trainers.

19:23and the rest USA and Canada will happen later on this year so I will be talking a little bit more about it in 27 but for me it was an eye-opening experience when I went to the gyms and they went to different gyms I went to commercial gyms I went to public gyms I went to smaller only gyms focused only on disability and charities as well in australia and just experienced it as as myself as marina so sometimes i went undercover sometimes i went with a bit of announcement and um i saw how different i felt and for me that was just like one of those experiences that i feel like I need to show it to people that's why I was recording actually this on the video so I'll have some videos as well it was so different because I felt like I was really welcomed and I think this word being welcome is very different from oh well I can go to I can go there being able to go there and being welcomed feeling welcomed is complete two different things because sometimes when venues or sporting facilities, they just want to meet the minimum standard.

20:52We just put a ramp with a certain angle. We just have a disabled toilet and then that's it. And you kind of feel it. You feel it because staff looks at you a particular way. You feel that, I don't know, tables are too high and things are on your way because they're not part of the accessibility standards. And then you start feeling it. But when I was in Australia and there were certain venues that actually took accessibility for the whole customer journey from beginning when I was calling them saying that, oh, I'm in a wheelchair, I'm going to come. They're like, OK, well, how can we help you?

21:33Can we send you additional information in advance? So this kind of whole experience of actually feeling, oh, actually they want me to be there. They want me to have a good experience and they want me to feel comfortable. That was like a different level. And I think this is my main outcome and the message for our industry here is that people feel it. People feel that if they're welcomed or if they're not welcomed. And then if they feel that they will belong in the space, they will just keep coming back and they will tell all their mates we need to come back. And it's actually going to bring more people into the venue.

22:20I suppose for me, that was probably one of those experiences that I didn't expect that it could be so different because I've never seen anything like that.

22:28Marina Logacheva:Sure. So this is an experience sort of across Australia, not simply in Australian gyms, just in Australian society, right? Yeah. I mean, I had a crazy experience with one airline there where they said, we're not going to put you on a plane. So I was waiting for three hours in the airport. But I was told that actually everybody knows that they are just not good airline. line yeah um so i think it's obviously it can't be 100 and nobody is claiming to be 100 inclusive accessible super disability friendly but people do as much as they can yeah and i think it was across yeah across all of these sectors that i saw so major even if people um were not able to do this or that they were still able to say, okay, well, we can't do this, but we can try to direct it to a place where you will be able to get into the building easier or, yeah, people will genuinely trying to help as much as they can.

23:39So that was, that was a really different experience.

23:43Marina Logacheva:And that adds up ultimately. And you talked about going to sort of disabled focused gyms in Australia. And I wonder whether you have any examples of commercial impact that can illustrate this type of inclusive work does pay dividends. Yeah. In Australia, I spoke with one of the largest operators of public gyms. So how it works, they are providing the service, they manage gyms on behalf of Council. And Council puts out a tender out and says, which gym operator will be managing our gym for the next five years? And lots of different organizations like YMCA or Bill Gravy Leisure, they would bid to be able to be a manager of the gym or a chain of gyms.

24:47so and when I spoke with Bill Gravia Leisure as one of the largest gym managers they own some gyms and they manage some others they told me a very interesting insight they said look we actually have so many activities that we do here inside the gyms for people with disabilities starting from special programs for people with disabilities to some blending exercises, to having specific gym equipment, to having specialist get-togethers for people with disabilities. And all of those things, they cost money. But we know that by investing in those gym and in those activities, we actually are able to provide such a service that people with disabilities, their carers, their friends, they go to our gyms.

25:43And we know that when we show the value of those activities that we do to the council, we are able to charge more money for managing the gym, but still win tenders. Because commercially, we are benefiting as a business operation, but also we're winning this with the councils because councils see how community is being affected positively. So they give us this tender and we've been operating with this model for over the last 30 years. So they tried and tested this model and it's working so well that they keep on investing more than any other gym into this because they know that if they keep continuing doing this, they're going to get more tenders and they're going to be benefiting financially.

26:36And it's not just a gym that Bill Gravy Leisure operates. They are very commercial and diversified business. They have lots of other things that they do. They're one of the largest organizations actually in Australia. They produce clothing and building and things like this. So they wouldn't do this if it wasn't for this commercial impact that they can see beyond just being a nice thing to do and having a bit more people with disabilities going through the door. So that was one example. And another example, I really loved how Anytime Fitness, which is pure commercial franchise chain, is doing right now.

27:23And they're probably leading the way in Australia. and hopefully they will be doing the same thing here as well for investing in disability inclusion, not just as a marketing campaign that they started doing, but they also actually have a very cool thing that they have performance indicators for the whole team, like KPI's, leadership KPI's for the managers, for the PTs, for all the levels within organization. And they see that this works so well that they actually, included disability inclusion within those kpis operationally um and they keep keep growing what they're doing within the commercial gym space as well so they are literally over overdoing and over investing in the disability inclusion because they see that they started doing it um i don't remember exactly how many years ago but more more than five yeah and they see that it brings clients through the door.

28:28And that's why they continue doing this. So I think those are some examples from Australia, but I also feel like sometimes when an organization talks about financial benefits, they only sometimes focus on just the top line. Okay, what's the revenue out of this? But sometimes, and especially when it comes to disability, there is so many more things around it. So obviously PR value, you know, it's always beneficial when you can talk about some good PR stories. It's good. But I also feel like with Gen Z and growth of TikTok and growth of being more emotionally mature and understanding the benefits of doing a good thing.

29:15Gen Z really value. And there are so many stats. I think Channel 4 was doing research last year that for 70 % of Gen Z, it's really important that an organization is doing a socially useful thing. So by showing that you're actually doing things for disability inclusion, you're actually talking to a young audience, which is a good thing. I would not just talk about commercial benefits and just mention just the financial examples from Australia, but I also would talk about all those additional things and measures like brand loyalty, brand value, bringing new younger audiences in, being more long-term with, you know, who you're talking to.

30:02So all of those things, they actually add up. And I think because this is such a big audience, 25%, and sometimes when I hear some stories, oh, we just need to grow by 2%, I'm like, well, it's not a no-brainer. Just talk to disabled people, and that's your audience that would be just actually responding faster than any other audience if you just start doing a little bit more specific campaigns. because there are not many people doing this. But then there is no way you can actually get any worse. You can only win with young audiences, with PR value, with new people with disabilities reacting to your campaign.

30:46So it's actually one of those things that people sometimes fear a little bit that, oh, what if I don't do it right? And, oh, what if I'm not ready? Or what if I say something wrong? But then you actually look at all of those benefits and you think like, well, maybe I'll just do a pilot. Maybe I'll do a pilot and see how it's going to go and then invest a bit more.

31:09Marina Logacheva:I think you've brought us on nicely there to the world of brands and how marketing departments can sort of lead brands to take a particular position in disability and disabled sport that would have all sorts of different impacts on how people work inside those brands and also perceive those brands. And I wonder now, in your position as the disability lead at MATA, obviously it's a sort of brand marketing specialist. Yeah, when you look at the ecosystem of brands involved in disabled support, what do you see? Who's doing it well? Who's doing it less well? I think with brands, there are obviously some companies that have been doing it for a few years.

32:03Toyota Bupa and they're doing it on a global scale obviously Airbnb all of those organizations I feel like it would be useful for the whole industry to learn a little bit more how they are doing this rather than just saying okay what are the commercial campaigns that are going out But actually, it would be really useful to see what are the benefits, commercial benefits for the organizations, for them, like why they keep on doing it year after year. And I must say that we've been trying to find some stats and data and speak with people in the industry, but we really couldn't really find some specific numbers.