Ade Adepitan

Ade Adepitan spearheading all things Olympic/Paralympic. With appearances on the One Show in the lead up to the Games, he has also filmed Series 4 of That Paralympic Show for Channel 4 and will be an integral part of the channel’s Paralympic planning and programming over the course of the Paralympic Games.

In 2008 he was part of the Beijing Paralympics for the BBC where he commentated on the wheelchair basketball and covered the Basketball Final for the Paralympic World Cup on BBC2 for the fourth year running.  He has also previously covered the European Championships for BBC2’s Grandstand and reported for BBC1’s weekly Sportsround series.  His other sporting presenting credits include interviewing big name stars at the O2 for NBA Europe Live, the All-Star Game in New Orleans, British Basketball – Game On and coverage of the Eindhoven Swimming Championships.

Ade Adepitan hosted his own documentary for Radio Five Live, A Pair of Trainers, which saw him follow the personal progress of two unlikely fitness candidates.   Ade’s talents don’t just lie in sport presenting; in 2010 he acted as a judge on BBC3’s Dancing on Wheels, where alongside Strictly Come Dancing’s James and Ola Jordan, six couples consisting of an able bodied celebrity and a wheelchair contestant competed in Latin and ballroom disciplines to win the chance of competing at the Wheelchair European Ballroom Championships.

Ade Adepitan has reported for BBC1’s Holiday series where he has travelled to France, scuba dived in Mexico, gone on safari in Kenya and the Gambia, skied in Canada and America as well as filmed in Bonaire and Curacao in the Caribbean.  He took on a new challenge in 2006 with his first principle acting role for BBC1’s popular kids’ drama, Desperados. He has also appeared in Brit feature film Freight, ITV1’s Hardware and BBC1’s Casualty.

2005 saw Ade participate in Beyond Boundaries, a four part documentary series for BBC2, which took him on the trek of a lifetime across the rainforests, deserts, rivers and mountains of Nicaragua.  His other credits include Tiger, Tiger for Channel Five, where Ade reported on endangered species from around the globe. His personal highlights included riding elephants while looking for tigers in India and swimming with sharks in Australia. He also overcame his fear of water and took part in night walks in the depths of the African jungle.  He also presented Dream Ticket for LWT in which he explored Jamaica and went diving in the Seychelles.

In January 2005 Ade Adepitan proved he is capable of a lot more than your ordinary presenter when he performed a poem with Stephen Fry detailing the plight of children with disabilities at The Holocaust Memorial in Westminster Abbey in front of the Queen and other luminaries.  Aside from presenting Ade has done a number of high profile public speaking engagements including the launch of the 2012 Olympic bid at the Royal Opera House alongside Tony Blair.

He works extensively in the UK giving motivational speeches to schools, charities and businesses including The Royal Mail, BUPA, NSPCC, Lloyds TSB and BT.  An accomplished wheelchair basketball player, Ade represented Great Britain at the Paralympics in Athens 2004 where they won Bronze and a Gold medal at the 2005 World Championships in Manchester.  He also took on the challenge of the London Marathon in 2007 which he completed in just two and a half hours.

Ade’s energy and enthusiasm has made him an ideal ambassador for the NSPCC as well as patron for The Association of Wheelchair Children and Scope.  He was also an ambassador for London’s 2012 Olympic bid and now sits on the advisory board of LOCOG.  In 2006, Ade was given an honorary Doctorate by Loughborough University and had the honour of being awarded an MBE for his contribution to disabled sport in the Queen’s 2005 Birthday Honours.  More recently in 2010, Ade was awarded the Lifetime Achievement award from the University of East London.

He also took on the challenge of the London Marathon in 2007 which he completed in just two and a half hours.

Not one to sit on the sidelines, Ade’s new sporting passion is wheelchair tennis. He can often be seen at Roehampton early in the mornings practising his killer serve!

What sets our speakers apart is not just their credentials, but their ability to engage and captivate.