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  • New Zealand Listener

    This sporting life

    Dec 06, 2020 6 minutes
    by CLARE DE LORE

    Stories of New Zealanders living with disabilities are too oft en seen through the lens of “inspiration porn”, according to Dan Buckingham, head of Attitude Pictures, the Auckland company behind Attitude, the Sundaymorning TV series.

    Buckingham, tetraplegic since a rugby accident as an 18-year-old, could easily fit one of the cliched stereotypes he and his programme-makers aim to dispel. His life with partner Sam Jukes may have some additional challenges, but the family face most of the same issues as any other – sleepless nights with baby Etta, working from home under lockdown, even trying to find time to get married.

    The youngest of three children, Buckingham was raised on a farm in Southland. There had been talk, before he left home to go to the University of Otago, of him returning to the farm in the future. All that changed in an instant in 1999 when a scrum went wrong, leaving the sports-mad teenager with a C6-C7 spinal fracture.

    His parents, Terry and Ellen, were

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