Nottinghamshire Paralympian Richard Whitehead has spoken about a podcast he's launched shining a light on some of the world's elite athletes and sporting stars as 'real-life individuals'.
The double Paralympic gold medal winner, who was born in Lowdham, is presenting the Track and Ball series with the England and Manchester City women's footballer, Ellen White.
Their guests have included Mansfield's double Olympic gold-winning swimmer Rebecca Adlington and London 2012 long jump gold medallist Greg Rutherford.
Speaking about the podcast when the country was in the second national lockdown, Mr Whitehead MBE, 44, said: "The real reason we're doing this is because we feel that athletes sometimes are portrayed in a manner that is only performance.
"We want to really show athletes as real-life individuals that have personalities, that have private lives.
"But also we want to inspire and liberate the nation, especially at the moment where you've got a lot of anxiety and a lot of issues around people struggling because of lockdown.
"Athletes, being successful in their own discipline, they realise that they've got responsibilities to give back to the public."
Mr Whitehead, who lives in Burton Joyce, added: "We want the guests to really enjoy the podcast as well so we're doing a lot of research around those kinds of questions that they've never been asked before.
"I think what you find is, especially with me and Ellen being athletes ourselves, you always get asked the same thing about - for me, 2012 and 2016 and doing certain things.
"But those kinds of real questions that maybe you've never been asked before, those self-discovery questions, that are really important.
"So, for instance, with Rebecca Adlington we talked a lot about the menstrual cycle and how the time of the month really affected her performance."
The weekly episodes are available on YouTube and the podcast is produced by sports journalist and broadcaster Mark Shardlow, formerly of the BBC.
"Every four weeks we do a live show, we do three pre-records and then one live," added Mr Whitehead.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games were due to begin in July but were postponed until next year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr Whitehead said he was training towards when the Games can eventually go-ahead.
"The lockdown and everything has held up the Paralympic Games itself but I just keep going and hopefully it takes place next year and I'm still training hard," he said.
"I'm based at Loughborough University for my track sessions and just training like I normally am with my coach, we're trying to get ready for the games.
"A Paralympic cycle's four years and then to extend that to another year and try and keep injury-free and motivation high it is tough.
"But luckily I've got a really dynamic team who are able to move my programme around a little bit and enable me to still have that focus to hopefully be successful in Tokyo."
