Lacey Henderson wants to be the Snoop Dogg of NBC’s Paralympics coverage, which kicks off Wednesday night.

Which is to say: She wants to bring wit, street smarts and unpredictability to the network’s portrayal of disabled athletes, jolting it out of the cloying “tragedy to triumph” cliches that have defined the media’s coverage of disability.

“I’ve always had a big mouth,” says Henderson, a Denver native and lifelong Coloradan who lost her right leg above the knee at age 9 to childhood cancer. “So I might as well use it for good.”

Using it for good, in this instance, means telling entertaining, accessible stories about the Paralympics and, more broadly, about disability. A 2016 Paralympian and 11-year veteran of the Team USA para athletics roster, Henderson (who retired from competition last year) used to chafe at how she and fellow athletes were shoehorned into tediously edifying narratives of courage and perseverance. 

“People with disabilities are much weirder than that,” Henderson says, “but also much more normal. If that makes any sense.”

It does in Henderson’s telling. She’s been unfurling alternative takes about disability for nearly a decade, most prominently as the host of “Picked Last in Gym Class,” a 17-episode vodcast that debuted in 2019 — the year before the documentary “Crip Camp” garnered raves for its similarly paradigm-shifting revelations.

On “Picked Last,” Henderson showcased disabled guests in all their nonheroic glory, ranting profanely about ableism, fulminating against the U.S. health care system, shredding stereotypes, trampling on taboos and otherwise making disability relatable and relevant.

That’s a big part of what NBC wants Henderson to do for its Paralympics coverage. As one of two Paris-based anchors for the 2024 Games, she’s charged with reframing the Paralympics not as a trite feel-good story, but as a world-class competition waged by intense, charismatic, sexy athletes.

Who happen to have disabilities.

“My understanding is that I’ll be doing hella vibe checks,” the 35-year-old Henderson says. That assignment gels perfectly with her sensibility. “I’ve joked for a long time that disability has terrible branding. This is an opportunity to dish it up a little bit. If you have a good way of explaining something and making it exciting, then people will be hooked.”

Paris broadcast is a downpayment on the 2028 Games in Los Angeles

Americans may be ripe for the hooking. While the Paralympics are one of the world’s most-watched sporting events, with more than 4 billion global viewers, U.S. audiences haven’t caught on yet. NBC began seriously working on that problem in the 2020 cycle, vastly expanding its broadcast package for the Tokyo Paralympics with support from heavyweight sponsors such as Toyota, Visa and Eli Lilly. 

Even so, the network only drew 14 million viewers over the entire nine days of coverage. Undeterred by the low ratings, NBC Universal will present a record 1,600 hours of cable, streaming and over-air coverage of the 2024 Games, more than 20 times the airtime it committed to the Rio Paralympics in 2016, just two cycles ago.

It’s all a down payment on 2028, when the Olympics and Paralympics come to Los Angeles. That’s when NBC hopes the Games will truly go mainstream, and when its investments in building a Paralympic audience will start to pay real dividends, according to NBC Olympics president Gary Zenkel.

Henderson is a very intentional choice to advance that agenda, combining Paralympic experience with ease in front of a camera and a talent for unpacking and reformulating disability stereotypes. Her supporters say few figures are better qualified to humanize a community that’s otherized so consistently and so casually.

Disability activist Emily Ladau, author of the acclaimed book “Demystifying Disability,” said Henderson is “the perfect person” to have a role in NBC’s Paralympics coverage. 

“She will bring much-needed authenticity to the storytelling about a population so often overlooked or ignored,” Ladau said.

“Lacey participated in an on-air talent training program and immediately jumped off the screen during our rehearsals,” said Alexa Pritting, NBC Sports’ Paralympics supervising producer. “Her energy is infectious. Lacey’s knowledge and passion for parasports will certainly help us to engage audiences and create lifelong fans.”

Teaching people to say Paralympics correctly will be a win

When Henderson got involved in parasports 15 years ago, almost nobody — not even people with disabilities — was paying attention to them. She was barely aware of them herself until her early 20s, more than a decade after she lost her leg. 

For most of her teens she starred not as a para athlete but as a competitive cheerleader in nondisabled contexts, winning all-state honors at Regis Jesuit High School and spending four years on the University of Denver’s varsity cheerleading squad.

It was only after graduating from DU in 2011 that she got interested in parasports, which were spiking in popularity at that time for two major reasons.

First, prosthetic technology had achieved breakthroughs that supported better biomechanics and higher athletic performance.

Second, Oscar Pistorius had altered the parasports paradigm with his attention-grabbing turn in the London Olympics, becoming the first disabled competitor to be taken seriously as an athlete.

Within a couple of years Henderson was being taken seriously, setting a U.S. long-jump record for above-knee amputees and barely missing the podium at the 2013 World Para Athletics Championships. She made the U.S. Paralympic team in 2016, competing in long jump and the 100-meter sprint at the Rio Games. As recently as 2022 she held a top-five international ranking in the long jump.

Along the way, Henderson started posting videos on social media to counteract the sheer lack of useful information about parasports. 

When she competed at the Rio Paralympics in 2016, friends and family back home had no way to watch her events (which weren’t broadcast in the U.S.). Simply finding medal results took a lot of Googling. And even within her circle of intimates, not everyone understood what the Paralympics were about.

“I just wanted to stop explaining that it’s not short for ‘Paralyzed Olympics,’” Henderson says, noting that “para” means “parallel,” i.e. equal to. “Or that the Paralympics have nothing to do with the Special Olympics,” a noncompetitive event for children and adults with intellectual disabilities. 

“If I can even get people to pronounce ‘Paralympics’ correctly, that’s a win,” she said.

“Everybody is going to face disability at some point”

Her success on social media opened the door to public speaking gigs and some influencer contracts, which in turn led to the hosting gig on “Picked Last in Gym Class,” produced by DCP Entertainment. The vodcast gave Henderson a platform to look beyond parasports and address disability from social, cultural and political angles, with guests such as Ladau, who was born with Larsen syndrome, and “Breaking Bad” actor RJ Mitte and dancer Jerron Herman, who both have cerebral palsy.

Her conversations on “Picked Last” fused disability-specific themes with expansive general-interest content such as parenthood, mental health, gender roles, cancer survival and the arbitrariness of success. 

“I’ve gotten deeper into understanding humanity through the lens of disability,” she observed in one episode. “And the more you work with able-bodied athletes or with able-bodied people, the more you realize, ‘Oh, we’re the same. And frankly, I’m doing much better than you.’”

Henderson’s one-word shorthand for that attitude is normalization — the process of moving disability from the cultural margins to the mainstream and placing disability and nondisability on a shared spectrum, rather than segregating them in separate boxes.

“Everyone’s going to face disability at some point,” Henderson told The Colorado Sun. “It might be temporary, but it touches everybody. So I’ve been kind of trying to figure out how to include disability as a character in (NBC’s Paralympics coverage). Because it is a character, but it’s not the main character. There’s a fine line of which disability stories do we tell, and which athlete stories do we tell?” 

They are essential to the full story, Henderson believes. And she’s got a lot to say about both, given her extensive background as a competitor and her lived experience related to the challenges and sensitivities of disability. 

“I think people outside of disability are afraid to ask certain questions, and I know enough of the nuances that I’m not afraid to ask the questions,” she said. “It’s a great time to raise those issues in an appropriate, educational way.”

“What propels the disgust for disability is the fear that you might become disabled or debilitated,” adds Herman, an acclaimed dancer and choreographer. “It leads to the feeling of disability being ghettoized. I think Lacey’s sense of self and confidence will really start to move the needle around how people think about that.”

NBC has never had in-country hosts on its Paralympic broadcast team, so Henderson and co-host Andrea Joyce will be originating new roles. The pair will have broad discretion not only in choosing which stories they cover, but also in what sort of spin to apply. 

Henderson expects to use Team USA’s headquarters as a base for talking with athletes and their families. There will also be regular check-ins with U.S.-based studio hosts Sophie Morgan and Chris Waddell. And Henderson will need to be nimble and pivot quickly toward whatever happens during the Games. 

“One of my personal goals is to focus on some of the less glamorous sports, like equestrian and archery, that we don’t see as much,” Henderson adds. There will be a lot of game-time decisions. I’m really excited to be a part of telling those stories, but the more I look at my schedule, the more I’m wondering how I’m going to get away with working just 12 hours a day.”

She’s thrilled to be paired with Joyce, who was inducted last year into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame. With 17 Olympic assignments under her belt dating back to the 1990s, Joyce adds serious gravitas to the 2024 Paralympic coverage team, balancing Henderson’s rookie enthusiasm with old-pro chops.

“She’s the GOAT,” Henderson says. “She’s amazing. I love that lady. And she loves a glass of rosé, so we’re on the same page.”

Goal one: Steer the broadcast away from “Olympics Lite”

While Henderson will appear in some pre-taped segments, most of her air-time will be live and unfiltered. 

“That’s more exciting but also more terrifying,” she says. “But it’s also not emergency medicine. If a mistake happens, no one’s dying. And I think it’s not necessarily the mistakes that matter, it’s how you recover from those mistakes.”

Above all, Henderson wants to prevent an “Olympics Lite” ambience from seeping into the telecasts. “I’ve never wanted to model (the Paralympics) after the Olympics, because we’re not like them. And I think that’s actually a strength. That’s an asset.” 

She’s also wary of identifying too closely with the people and events she’s covering. “I’m really scared about caring too much — especially as somebody who reveres parasport.”

The 2024 Paralympics offer tons of potential for drama involving American athletes.

Will sprint specialist and three-time medalist Hunter Woodhall win his first Paralympic gold to match the Olympic long-jump championship won by his wife, Tara Davis-Woodhall, three weeks ago? Can high-jump wunderkind Ezra Frech, a world-record holder at just 19 years old, outleap teammate and mentor Sam Grewe? Will swimmer Jessica Long bag the four medals she needs to become the third-most decorated Paralympian in history? Will either (or both) the men’s wheelchair basketball team or women’s sitting volleyball team win a third consecutive Paralympic gold?

“We have come so far in the Paralympic movement, but we have so far to go,” Henderson says. “A lot of that is only going to happen by continually creating space to have the conversation. We’re going to have to figure out a lot of stuff as we go. We have to learn how to do things differently, and that could lead to doing some of them way better.”

However it shakes out, Henderson is grateful to be in the broadcast booth this year — and not in the arena. 

“Thank God I’m retired,” she laughs. “I couldn’t do this anymore. The people that are growing up in the sport are too damn good.”

Type of Story: News

Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.