‘If I can inspire just one kid, then that’s job done’ – Ash Harwood on his Gladiators journey

Of course Ash Harwood watched Gladiators.

If you were a child in the mid-90s, you would have as well.

The show was woven into the fabric of the UK’s cultural make-up, there with the Britpop battles and Stars In Their Eyes and Mystic Meg on the Lottery, and Eric Cantona leaping over the barricades at Crystal Palace…

Sorry, nostalgia. It’s a powerful thing.

The point is, Ash Harwood was watching – because we all were. We all wanted to be Jet or Nightshade (or Rhino or Hunter, take your pick) and we were all terrified of Wolf; and while we may not have known his name, there was a kid in every playground who never missed the chance to imitate the trademark Scottish growl of head official John Anderson.

‘Contender… READY! Gladiator… REEEEAAAADDY!’

So you can see why, when Ash walked into the Lee Valley Athletics Centre and saw it all – the logos, the obstacles, the pinch-yourself realisation of a childhood memory made real – there was one over-riding thought in his mind.

How the hell had he ended up here?

‘Marathon running was pure stubbornness, and not wanting to be the worst at something’

See, young Ash knew all about Gladiators.

Sitting in front of the TV was his happy place, and sport? Well, that definitely wasn’t.

‘I’d forge sicknotes to avoid PE’, Harwood admits.

‘I was overweight, and sport just wasn’t something for me. It was only when I realised that I needed to get fit that I got into it, and it was the best thing I did.’

And, not a person to do things by halves, Harwood signed up for the 2019 London Marathon.

Yes, you read that right.

Without so much as a 5km run to his name (or, let’s be honest, a 1km jog at this stage), Ash threw his name into the mix for one of the world’s most iconic endurance events. And if that sounds a little bonkers to you, that’s okay – because everyone else thought the same thing as well.

‘My friends and family laughed at me, and I know it sounds ridiculous’, Ash grins.

‘But I’ve always been so competitive, and most people can run 5km. I didn’t want to be the slowest person running that, whereas if I could say I’d run a marathon, I’m part of that one percent club. So for me, it was pure stubbornness and not wanting to be the worst at something.’

‘As soon as I saw the adverts, I thought to myself ‘could I do this?’’

It won’t surprise you to know that Ash got that marathon done.

Then there was another, and another, and another – and, as a member of the London Frontrunners inclusive running group, Harwood had found his tribe.

And then he saw the Gladiators advert.

‘I watched the show as a kid, and as soon as I saw it, I watched reruns and thought to myself: ‘could I do this?’’, Harwood says.

‘And again, it was because of the running that I think I got onto the show. My audition was on April 22^nd last year – which I remember because I ran the London Marathon on April 21^st! I got a call from people saying they wanted to get me in, that they really liked me and they wanted me at a trial on the Monday. I told them that I had a marathon on the Sunday morning, and they thought I wouldn’t be able to do it, but I told them I’d be there.’

‘I walked into the Lee Valley Athletics Centre, and as soon as I saw the casting director, he told me I was crazy! It turned out one of the other casting directors had done the London Marathon and could not walk! I mean, I wasn’t okay, but it was either go then or don’t do it at all, so I basically crawled in!’

‘Why should I not talk about my sexuality when, in the 90s, it wouldn’t have been dreamed of?’

So, Ash was in.

Three days of training, health and safety chats, meeting the other contenders, working out the games – and then he was handed that iconic blue outfit, and suddenly, he was off to the races.

‘You first walk into the arena and see the Gladiators logo ticking round and projected onto the wall and it’s like – ‘wow!’’, Harwood remembers.

‘And then it was when I saw the headline: ‘Gladiators opening show had 6.5 million viewers!’ I thought nobody watched TV anymore, but then you get all the people streaming it as well. We knew it was going to be nostalgic, but it was just madness!’

Nostalgic, yes.

But also ground-breaking, because Ash happens to be gay.

And, by competing as his authentic self on the programme, Harwood was making a little bit of history.

‘A few people have said to me, why did you lead with that?’, Harwood says.

‘Well, that’s because it’s something that’s really important to me. You’ve got other people talking about their religion or their disability, which is so pertinent and important to them. So why should I not talk about my sexuality when, in the 90s, it wouldn’t have been dreamed of?’

‘You know, if someone went on the show as a gay man in the 90s, their husband or their partner would likely have been introduced as their friend or their housemate. They couldn’t have done otherwise, because they would have known there’d be backlash.’

‘The reaction was crazy, with so many people saying ‘thank you for the representation’’

Harwood isn’t wrong.

For all the rose-tinted retro-gazing to the Nineties, it’s worth remembering what things were like for the LGBTQ+ community then, when Gladiators was at its peak and Cool Britannia ruled, and everything on the surface seemed to be hunky-dory.

Section 28 was still the law of the land, meaning schools and libraries and local authorities were legally barred from doing anything to ‘promote homosexuality’. Votes to equalise the age of consent for same-sex relations between men were being defeated in Parliament, again and again. The Archers didn’t have a gay character until 1996, and the UK didn’t have an out gay male Cabinet minister until 1997. And as for civil partnerships and equal marriage? Forget about it!

So no, you couldn’t have had Ash Harwood – a marathon runner, a Gladiators contender, and an out gay man – on your TV screens in the first incarnation of the show.

And even now, a lifetime removed from the programme’s original run, that representation of the LGBTQ+ community on-screen in sport still matters.

‘The reaction was crazy, absolutely mad!’, Harwood says.

‘I had so many messages from people saying ‘thank you’, and that was the overwhelming message – ‘thank you for the representation, thank you for being so open, there’s a need for it still.’’

‘As I said on the show, if I can inspire just one young gay kid and be the visibility for them to think ‘yeah, I’m just like him’, then I can be proud of it, that’s job done.’

‘There’s so much LGBTQ+ visibility on TV right now, which is incredible – but I don’t think there’s enough representation of everyday people. I wanted to be seen as the sportsperson who just happens to be gay, rather than being there because I was gay.’

Gladiators contender Ash Harwood was speaking to Jack Murley on The Jack Murley Sports Show. You can hear new episodes every Wednesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all other podcast platforms.