The accessible sports day at Bar End filled every place and ran a waiting list, 14 years after 33 people took part. Aqua Bests follows on 29 October.

Winchester’s accessible sports day ran out of places this year and had to start a waiting list. Winchester Personal Bests was held at Winchester Sport and Leisure Park at Bar End on Thursday 3 September, and the city council says it reached “full capacity, plus a waiting list, of well over 200 individuals” (Winchester City Council).

Twenty separate groups took part alongside individual entrants, including day services, community groups and residential care homes. The youngest participant was 19 and the oldest was 67.

The event started in 2012, in the year of the London Paralympic Games, with 33 people. That is a sixfold increase in 14 years, on the council’s own figures.

What was on offer

The day was built around six activities. The council lists the venues as Winchester Sport and Leisure Park and the University of Winchester’s sports stadium:

  • boxing
  • circuits
  • cricket
  • football
  • running
  • squash

Participants compete against their own previous performance rather than each other, which is where the name comes from. The council lists the day as an autism friendly event (Winchester City Council).

Who runs it

Personal Bests is organised by Active LD, a community interest company registered as company number 16279000, working with Winchester City Council, the leisure operator Everyone Active and the University of Winchester (Active LD).

Betty Chadwick, Active LD’s executive director, said demand had grown to the point that the event “reached capacity very quickly this year”, and that people travel from across Hampshire to take part. She said more than half of participants return year after year.

She also made a point about how the day is put together. Active LD Advisors, who all have learning disabilities, choose the T-shirt colours, design the medals and water bottles and decide what the event does.

The figure the council quoted, and the one that has moved

Councillor Kelsie Learney, the city council’s cabinet member for the climate and nature emergency, cited Sport England research showing 43 per cent of disabled people are physically inactive against 23 per cent of people without a disability.

Those numbers are real, but they are older than the release implies. They come from the Active Lives Adult Survey for 2019/20 (Sport England).

The most recent Active Lives release covers November 2024 to November 2025 and was published on 23 April 2026. It puts disabled people and those with a long-term health condition at 49.1 per cent active, against about 70 per cent of everyone else (Sport England).

Reading the same release, the national charity Activity Alliance puts inactivity at 39.3 per cent for disabled people and 19.7 per cent for non-disabled people, a gap of 19.6 percentage points (Activity Alliance).

So the gap has narrowed a little since the figures the council used. A disabled adult is still about twice as likely to be inactive as everyone else.

Bar chart comparing physical inactivity rates for disabled and non-disabled adults in England, showing 43 per cent against 23 per cent in the 2019/20 Active Lives survey and 39.3 per cent against 19.7 per cent in the 2024-25 survey
Physical inactivity, disabled and non-disabled adults in England. Sources: Sport England Active Lives Adult Survey 2019/20; Activity Alliance analysis of Active Lives 2024-25, published 23 April 2026.
Share this chartFacebookWhatsAppX

What it means for you

The September event has been and gone, but the same organisers run a second Winchester day in the autumn, and that one is still taking entries.

Winchester Aqua Bests is on Thursday 29 October 2026, 10am to 1.30pm, hosted by Everyone Active at the Winchester Sport and Leisure Park. It covers swimming, water polo and aqua aerobics. Registration is £10 per participant, with an optional rash vest at £5. Active LD says there is still space (Active LD).

  • Register: the online form or the downloadable registration form on the Active LD site
  • Questions and bookings: Betty Chadwick, events@activeld.org or 07884 063201
  • Volunteering: Active LD takes volunteers for both events through its volunteering page

If you are travelling to Bar End, the leisure park sits just off the A31 at the bottom of the city, and the nearest long-stay parking is described on our parking in Winchester page. Check roadworks and travel before you set off in September, as the M3 junction 9 roundabout closes for the weekend of 11 to 14 September. Other things happening locally are listed on our things to do in Winchester page.

Sources