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The Olympics have soared before in Los Angeles. In less than two years, the Paralympics will take flight from L.A. for the first time.

LA28 hopes to raise the bar for the Paralympic movement when the Paralympic Games open in SoFi Stadium on Aug. 15, 2028. The city that already changed the Olympic movement by hosting the most commercially successful Games ever in 1984 could leave an equally indelible mark on the Paralympic movement.

“In the opening ceremony in two years’ time, we will be about to witness the Paralympic Games that can really put our movement in a higher step,” International Paralympic Committee president Andrew Parsons said, “in a higher position as a sport movement.”

While the Olympics were blossoming in L.A. in 1984, the Paralympics that year were hosted in New York and Stoke Mandeville, England in a patchwork plan that came to be known as the “Last-Minute Games” because a U.S.-based organizing committee failed to secure funding to host the Paralympic Games at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The LA28 Olympics and Paralympics logos are featured on a sign outside an event in 2024.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Forty years later, the Paris Paralympics solidified the movement’s position as one of the largest sporting events in the world. The 2024 Paralympics sold 2.5 million tickets, the most for a Paralympic Games, and had a record 12,941 global broadcast hours. The overall live audience for the Paris Paralympics grew by 40% compared to 2021 and 117% from 2016.

Seeing the Paralympics leaves a lasting impression on fans. A Nielsen Sports study commissioned by the IPC found that 73% of people thought the Paris Paralympic Games positively changed their attitudes toward people with disabilities.

LA28 wants to build on that momentum.

“I really would love to see the change of perception of what people with disabilities can do, but also most importantly see the athletes perform,” said Ileana Rodriguez, the LA28 vice president of Paralympic strategy and relations and a 2012 Paralympic swimmer. “Because oftentimes we forget the sport side of the athletes and put the disability in front, and I really hope that this is reversed in our Games.”

American Alexandra Truwit competes during the women’s 400-meter freestyle during the Paralympics on Sept. 5, 2024, in Nanterre, France.

(Adam Pretty / Getty Images)

It didn’t take long for Ali Truwit to see the Paralympic standard. The former Yale swimmer had always respected Paralympians for their grit, courage and strength, but after she lost the lower part of her left leg in a shark attack in 2023, Truwit had her own Paralympic awakening.

She realized that to even make the U.S. team for Paris, she needed to swim faster with one leg than she did with two.

“A lot of people would come up and say, like, “Oh well you could do the Paralympics,’” said Truwit, who had 15 months between having her leg amputated on her 23rd birthday and the opening ceremony of the Paris Paralympics. “I’m like, ‘Well, you can’t just do the Paralympics actually!’ It’s elite and it’s fast.”

Her American record time of 1 minute, 8.98 seconds seconds in the S10 100-meter backstroke at the 2024 U.S. Paralympic swimming trials was faster than the times she was putting up to be recruited for Division I schools. Also the U.S. record holder in the S10 400-meter freestyle (4:31.39), Truwit won silver medals in both races in her first Paralympic Games.

But as she starts training for 2028, Truwit knows even her national record times might not be enough to get on the podium in L.A.

In Paris, 175 world and 218 Paralympic records were broken across 22 sports. The quality of the performances are better than ever, Parsons, the Paralympic president, pointed out. Athletes have become more refined with their training techniques.

“If you raise the expectations for what high performance is, for what an athlete is, then gosh, that’s just going to open up so many more opportunities,” said Brent Hardin, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Alabama and director of Alabama Adapted Athletics. “The Paralympics has the ability to do that like no other sporting event in the world for athletes with disabilities.”

The last time the Summer Paralympics were in the United States, in 1996, the event was run by a separate committee from the Olympic organizers. Disorganized and under-publicized, the event was underwhelming, Hardin said. Since 2002, organizing committees have been required to put together joint bids to host both the Olympic and Paralympic Games, using the same venues, facilities and infrastructure.

LA28 will rely on mostly existing venues for both the Olympics and Paralympics, relieving many of the biggest headaches that have plagued previous organizing committees. But hosting 4,480 Paralympians in one village is an especially unique challenge.

UCLA students walk up and down stairs on a campus that features many hills. The school is scheduled to host the athletes’ village for the 2028 Paralympics.

(Al Seib/For The Times)

LA28 will host the Olympic and Paralympic villages at UCLA. While renowned for its red brick buildings and lush green lawns, UCLA’s campus is also notorious for its steep hills. In 2025, two students who used wheelchairs sued the university and the UC Board of Regents for discrimination, citing, in part, elevators that are often out of service, insufficient signage and dangerous conditions in pedestrian paths of travel.

Rodriquez recognized the campus’ geographical challenges that organizers can’t change. LA28 said in a statement it is focused on building upon UCLA’s existing accessibility foundation while exploring additional modifications and services to support Paralympic athletes and team officials, such as temporary ramps and modified restrooms. Construction is expected to begin this year, trying to minimize impact on normal campus activities.

“One solution is not going to solve it for everyone, but a system of different ones hopefully will for most of them,” said Rodriguez, an architect consulted on previous Games before working with LA28. “We’re aiming, of course, for 100% of the users, but it doesn’t mean that there might be challenges in some points.”

The Games will also need to accommodate millions of fans traveling around Southern California. The FIFA World Cup tested the transportation system and it was largely a success, but it presented problems for some fans.

Kate Scott, founder of Only Everywhere, a directory providing accessibility information about more than 400 venues in California, heard from fans who paid hundreds of extra dollars for accessible parking and a shuttle to the stadium only to learn later that a free shuttle option was available. Fans struggled to secure wheelchair accessible seats, especially after they were sold at astronomical resale values, and couldn’t get clear answers about what accommodations would be available in the stadium.

Fans pack SoFi Stadium during a World Cup match between the United States and Paraguay on June 12.

(Kelvin Kuo/Los Angeles Times)

SoFi Stadium aced the physical infrastructure with working elevators, wheelchair escorts and accessible seating with clear sightlines on every level. It was mostly an information gap that left fans wanting.

“It’s not a problem if you say there’s no way to get to the cafe on the second floor. It is a problem if they find that out at the bottom of the stairs,” Scott said. “They can plan ahead if you just give them the information. It’s not about perfection. It’s about telling people what to expect.”

Of the 400 California venues Scott has added to Only Everywhere’s directory, more than half don’t publish anything online about accessibility. Only 7% cover accommodations for mobility limitation, hearing disability, vision impairment and sensory disabilities.

Disability advocates hope the Paralympics can lead to improved access to social services and structures for people with disabilities during and after the Games.

“Not just a one-in-every-four-years kind of event,” said Juliann Anesi, an associate professor of gender studies at UCLA and an affiliate faculty member with the disabilities studies department.

After the 1984 Olympics helped fund youth sports in L.A. for decades with a $230-million surplus, the 2028 Games have already jump-started adaptive sports opportunities as part of the PlayLA program.

Hunter Woodhall from the U.S. wins the men’s 400-meter T62 final at the 2024 Paralympics on Sept. 6, 2024, in Paris.

(Thibault Camus / Associated Press)

The program is run by L.A. Department of Recreation and Parks and will have 12 adaptive sports (adaptive archery, athletics, kayaking, skateboarding, lacrosse, pickleball, para swimming, blind soccer, goalball, para surfing, wheelchair basketball and wheelchair tennis) for the 2026-27 season. The program is on track to reach 5,000 total adaptive sports program enrollments in 2027, LA28 said.

“LA28 is an opportunity not only to think about people with disabilities as part of [society], but instead to really reshape the conversation around disability, especially in sport,” Truwit said. “… We don’t look at Paralympians as an inspiration or as something where they’re overcoming a limitation, but rather as just part of human diversity and potential.”

At the halfway mark of the Olympic quadrennial, Truwit is already dreaming about L.A. The Connecticut native can picture the opening ceremony in SoFi Stadium, where she will be flanked by her fellow American Paralympians. That group could even include several athletes who received grants from her nonprofit Stronger Than You Think, which helps provide prosthetics to girls and women experiencing limb loss. Being at the Paralympics together would be a dream, Truwit said.

Parsons will open what will be the final Paralympic Games of his IPC presidency. He envisions going out on a high note.

“The best Paralympic Games,” Parsons said of his 2028 expectations, “ever.”

Asked what would constitute a successful season for his side, Barry-Murphy said: “We don’t know. I think one of the beauties of this season is that, for a lot of us, we’re going into the unknown.

“Our feeling is that we can surprise a lot of people. We have a real hunger and appetite to improve on what we did last season.”

Barry-Murphy is preparing for a blockbuster start to the campaign, with Welsh rivals Wrexham at the Cardiff City Stadium for a south-north derby on 17 August.

The former Manchester City academy coach says he is unsure whether any more new signings will be completed ahead of Wrexham’s visit, with Lincoln City midfielder Jack Moylan still the only outfield player recruited by Cardiff this summer.

“I don’t think so,” said Barry-Murphy when asked if Cardiff were close to a new signing.

“If you start anticipating timings or what may or may not happen, you just waste a lot of your time and your energy.

“Our focus is purely on the game on Monday and making sure that anything that could or maybe would distract us, doesn’t.”

Barry-Murphy said injured Wales forward Rubin Colwill could return for Wrexham’s visit, but fellow international Dylan Lawlor is unlikely to be fit to face the Red Dragons.

U.S. Navy sailor Chase Humes is moving back to his dad’s house in Texas.

Last month, the 25-year-old was notified that his “voluntary separation” from the Navy, which he’d applied for in May 2025, had been approved — he would be released from service. He and his wife must be out of their military housing in San Diego by mid-July.
Humes, a transgender man who’s been taking testosterone for seven years, was among at least 1,000 service members who chose to leave on their own terms rather than face involuntary separation following the military’s February 2025 ban on transgender service members. By choosing a voluntary separation, he’s been approved for an “honorable discharge,” which preserves access to benefits like Veterans Affairs healthcare that others worry they might not have access to.
Humes is one of about 4,200 transgender service members the Department of Defense estimates have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and could be subject to the policy. Advocates say the transgender service member population could exceed 15,000, according to a UCLA study from 2014.
A new California bill, Assembly Bill 1775, is intended to assist people who don’t have the certainty of Humes’s honorable discharge and worry about their future prospects if they were forced out of the military. Proponents say the bill, by San Diego Democratic Assemblymember Chris Ward, could help people who are given less than honorable discharge for hiding their transgender identity by helping them restore access to services.

In the meantime, service members like Humes are scouting their next move. The sailor and his wife have been searching for jobs near his dad’s house outside Houston. They can’t afford to start their life in San Diego, despite having fallen in love with the city’s accepting atmosphere.
“The whole reason I joined was for a better future for myself and my family, and it just got torn away,” Humes said of the separation.

Over a year in limbo

Among the flurry of executive orders President Trump issued at the start of his second term was the Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness order.

It rescinded President Biden’s policy permitting transgender people to openly serve in the forces, and asserted that gender dysphoria and using pronouns different than one’s biological sex at birth were inconsistent with the country’s “high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity.”

What followed the Jan. 27, 2025 order was a series of legal challenges, some of which are still ongoing. Last month, a federal appeals court ruled that Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military was likely unconstitutional, allowing a group of 28 plaintiffs from across the country to continue serving while their case proceeds.
Transgender troops were faced last spring with the choice of either voluntarily leaving the military, and in some cases receiving separation pay, or saying nothing and hoping they were not found out and “involuntarily separated” from the forces.

Humes is choosing to voluntarily leave the Navy after the Trump administration announced a policy banning transgender troops.

(Adriana Heldiz / CalMatters)

Kat Koehlmoos, who was in active duty for eight years and is now in an inactive Army Reserve status, said the military chain of command does not know she is transgender.
“Anyone could use my testimony today to report me to the Army Reserves here, and they would be required to take action to involuntarily discharge me from the U.S. military,” she told lawmakers during a hearing on the legislation last month.
Koehlmoos is a board member for SPARTA Pride, which advocates for transgender service members and co-sponsored the legislation. She said the bill came about in part because supporters are concerned the federal government might replicate the actions it took during its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which allowed gay, lesbian and bisexual troops to serve if they concealed their sexual orientation. Some 2,000 troops were given less than honorable discharges in connection to the policy, and were shut out of some veterans’ benefits, according to a class-action lawsuit that was settled in 2025.

Koehlmoos said the group anticipates some people who are “involuntarily separated” under the 2025 transgender ban will be punished by the Department of Defense for not complying with the law.

“They may pursue other charges: accusing them of falsifying records or lying on federal documents, and attempt to get them a less than honorable discharge because of that,” she said, although SPARTA Pride does not know of any such cases so far.
If that happened in California, Ward’s bill would help those people qualify for expedited professional licensing in civilian careers like contracting and nursing and prioritize them for discharge upgrades as well as housing and support services.

Ward said he believes the benefits of all service members should be secured, whether they leave voluntarily or involuntarily.

“They have served honorably, and this was a separation that was involuntary, and they would deserve the full benefits that they otherwise would have been due had they been cisgender,” he said.

Unknown number affected

It’s unclear how many people could be affected by the legislation. Ward has repeatedly told fellow lawmakers that 2,900 of the federal government’s estimated 4,200 transgender troops — 69% — are either from California or are currently stationed in California. In an emailed statement in response to a question from CalMatters, Ward said the figures were mistakenly adopted after conversations with veterans’ advocates, and he would no longer use them to describe the number of affected California service members.
The bill would also require the state’s Department of Veterans Affairs to create a new housing and supportive services grant for veterans, which Ward said would fill a gap in existing housing support for veterans experiencing imminent homelessness. But the budget Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Monday does not include funding for that program.
Instead, it directs $2 million toward the state’s existing Veteran’s Military Discharge Upgrade Grant Program, which provides legal assistance for veterans fighting for a discharge upgrade.
As Humes prepares to leave San Diego, Ward’s bill is still pending in Sacramento. The legislation has cleared policy committees in both houses and awaits a hearing in the Senate appropriations committee.
Koehlmoos said the moment is stressful for most transgender troops — those being removed voluntarily, who have few options; the people who haven’t notified the chain of command, who may be living in fear; and the service members who will delay their transition, or never transition, because of the federal government’s ban on transgender troops.

“For me that’s heartbreaking, because that really is putting your life on hold,” she said.

Kate Wolffe writes for CalMatters.

John Mozeliak is in Anaheim for one clear-cut reason: to set the foundation for the Angels to get back on track.

At his introductory news conference at Angel Stadium on Saturday, the team’s new baseball operations consultant and interim general manager laid out his vision for success — while acknowledging recent woes — alongside Molly Jolly, one day after the first-year Angels president relieved general manager Perry Minasian of his duties amid his sixth straight losing season.

“Obviously, [the Angels] lacked consistency in terms of when you think about winning, right? Because that’s the proxy,” Mozeliak said. “There’s a lot of things we can use to determine if the organization is healthy or not. … Where Molly and I are connecting on this is like, we understand wins and losses matter, but how do you get to a place where that becomes consistent?

“Look at the best clubs in baseball [and] what you admire; whether they’re large-market or small-market, they have a philosophy, they have direction, and they stick to it, right? … That’s ultimately what we need to do here, and that’s hopefully something I can help bring to them.”

Mozeliak spent 18 seasons (2008-25) as general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, a tenure consisting of 10 playoff appearances and a World Series victory in 2011.

The 57-year-old intends to “audit” the Angels in this new role alongside Jolly, with plans to hire a general manager by the time Mozeliak’s contract is up “sometime in December.”

“I brought on board John Mozeliak to assist me in preparing a baseball operation strategy as well as guide me in the search for a new general manager,” Jolly said, mentioning that her decision to fire Minasian and bring in Mozeliak had brewed for weeks.

“I did this because John has a proven track record of building and maintaining winning baseball cultures, and my goal is to bring that here to the Angels.”

Mozeliak didn’t rule himself out as the long-term answer at general manager and was emphatic about not speaking in absolutes. However, the longtime executive said he’d rather help Jolly “bridge the gap” during the Angels’ transformative period before anything else.

The Angels have plenty of gaps entering Saturday’s matchup with the Athletics. The Angels are tied for last in the American League with a 34-49 record while on the road to a 12th consecutive finish out of the playoffs.

And all of that is before mentioning the “sell the team” chants that flood the right-field upper deck at Angel Stadium at each home game oas ex-Angel Shohei Ohtani thrives with the Dodgers.

Mozeliak understands that the Angels have lacked direction in recent seasons. He asked for patience in rebuilding the team alongside Jolly.

“I knew coming in, this isn’t going to be something where Molly and I had a light switch and everything just starts working perfectly,” Mozeliak said. “It’s not going to work that way. … I would ask for some patience. We need a little time to sort of work through this … when we come out on the other end of this tunnel, we hope to be in a very successful place.”

Jolly said of Angels fans’ discontent, “I know what’s happening. I see it, I hear it. Fans have a right to have their voices be heard. Didn’t influence the decision that I wanted to make, but we all want to win. Our owner wants to win. I do. The fans deserve that, and that’s what we’re going to work toward.”

Mozeliak acknowledged he’d already forgotten some names of Angels personnel he was introduced to Saturday. But he also said that first-year manager Kurt Suzuki and the rest of the coaching staff’s jobs are secure through the season.

“I met with most of them this morning, and I told them they’re all fine for this year,” Mozeliak said. “There’s nothing they have to worry about. We’re not making any coaching changes right now. I really just need to get to know them, right?”

Mozeliak spoke to Suzuki on Saturday and said that he and his staff are “very impressive.”

Across the board, Mozeliak — who hasn’t yet met owner Arte Moreno since moving into this role — is focused on knowing who the Angels are at this point, with an “aggressive timeline” looming in the background.

With that said, Mozeliak shared that he isn’t “overly concerned” with the Aug. 3 trade deadline, nor is he worried about the MLB Draft, which starts July 11.

“My philosophy on the draft is to let the scouting director and his team do their jobs,” Mozeliak said. “The only real input I’m going to have is … understanding their process … and then if there are some financial decisions that are being banked into who we pick and why.”

Jolly brought in Mozeliak to help the Angels hire their fourth full-time general manager since 2012.

And while many might believe not much will change as long as Moreno remains the owner, Jolly said she has “autonomy” to assess the Angels’ baseball operations and is “confident in my authority and scope within the organization.”

Those invested in the Angels will believe it when they see it.

“When I think about the Angels right now, I just look at it as a very opportunistic time here,” Mozeliak said. “New leadership on the business side; we’re going to put a great team on the baseball side.

“But it’s going to be a place that I hope, in a couple years, we’re all proud of.”

On Thursday, U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC) stood up a new command to speed up reaction times and sustain operations within the anti-access/area denial environments of the Pacific. To help achieve that goal, the commander of this new unit told TWZ he wants to be able to saturate any future adversary with so many drones they have trouble operating. 

“We have learned, particularly looking at Ukraine, there really is no sanctuary area that is protected from observation and potential targeting,” Maj. Gen. Bernard J. Harrington told us during a media roundtable to introduce his new command. It’s called the 7th Infantry Division Multi-Domain Command – Pacific (7th ID MDC-PAC). Headquartered at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington, it combines the 7th Infantry Division and the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force (MDTF). The idea is to merge the maneuver capabilities of the 7th ID’s two Stryker brigades with the long-range sensing, fires, cyber, space, electronic warfare, and information capabilities of the MDTF.

The new unit was created as the U.S. still struggles to be on the leading-edge of modern drone warfare, especially when it comes to the lower-end segment of this broad capability set, a deficit we have frequently highlighted. This is a concern top Army officials have acknowledged to us.

US Army Historic Pivot: 7th Infantry Division Becomes Multi-Domain Command – Pacific

“As we look at our employment of drones,” Harrington proffered, “we are looking at a host of not just traditional sense-and-strike drones, but how do we couple that — utilizing an adaptive and agentic C2 [command and control system] — to long-range one-way attack, to be able to overwhelm potential adversarial systems by a volume that is connected from our sensor drone all the way to our long-range one-way attack drone.”

Harrington was referring to an AI-driven system that can make and execute decisions on its own — routing data, repositioning sensors, matching targets to shooters — without requiring a human to manually approve each step. He later described it as being a “soldier-on-the-loop, not in-the-loop” system, meaning that a human monitors and can override the system’s actions.

You can read all about how AI will enable the future of lower-end drone warfare in our deep dive here.

In another lesson from Ukraine, as well as conflicts in the Middle East, Harrington wants to be able to use decoy drones to “confuse and potentially deceive an adversary.” The goal is to “deplete potential magazine depth.”

We saw this play out in Ukraine, where Russian mass barrages typically use decoy drones to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses, confuse its sensors and force the expenditure of valuable air defense munitions. Ukraine eventually responded in kind, with its own decoy drones, to achieve the same effects.

The need for the U.S. to develop a vast arsenal of long-range one-way attack drones that can also serve as decoys to consume enemy effectors is a topic TWZ has addressed in the past.

You can see one of the Russian decoy drones in the image below.

Harrington added that he is also looking at electronic warfare drones “to help isolate, and then enable other drones to be effective. So when we look at the family of systems, it is not just one role for any one of our drones — it’s how do they pair together, and then how do we get sensor to shooter most effectively to target any adversary appropriately.”

Harrington declined to say what kinds of drones the new command aims to field, though it should be noted that U.S. Central Command recently used Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) kamikaze drones, a design reverse-engineered from the Iranian-designed Shahed-136, in the war against Iran. It was the first time those drones were used in combat.

“There are a host of drones that we are using from multiple vendors, and really what we’re looking at is how do we start bridging the gap — because I would say with the multi-domain task force, we got to a point for the first time that I’ve seen where we could now engage farther than we could sense,” he posited. “So we have worked very, very closely with several vendors in order to close that distance.”

A key to making this all work is getting these drones into the hands of troops to see how these systems actually function across the wide range of environments where the Army operates in the Pacific.

“We’ve got Arctic steppe in Alaska and the high north that are going to require a different type of drone and different types of employment than you would have in a jungle environment in Hawaii or Malaysia, which is different than a desert environment in the Australian Outback,” USARPAC commander, Gen. Ronald Clark, told us.

“It’s challenging, but we’re dealing with the best and brightest that we have — our young troopers out there are very comfortable with having technology in their hands, and very comfortable with giving feedback associated with what works and what does not, because their buddies’ lives depend on it,” Clark posited. “It’s literally a responsibility that every soldier takes on and takes very seriously.”

“The other thing I’d add is the distances we have to operate,” Clark noted. “For instance, if you drew a box that was 2,000 nautical miles in each direction and started in Cambodia — went east to the Philippines, south to Indonesia, and then back west to Malaysia, and then back to Cambodia — that box is roughly the same size as the box you would draw if you placed it over Western Europe, from the UK to Finland to Turkey to Spain.”

Interestingly, the officials leading this effort declined to name a specific adversary and there was no mention of China at all, even though that nation is the primary pacing threat of the service and by far the biggest challenge in the region.

“The multi-domain command Pacific is not tied to a specific adversary, and it’s not tied to a specific location,” Clark explained when asked about threats from North Korea. “It’s a capability that we have built to counter any threat from any adversary, so it’s not necessarily focused on a specific part of the region or a specific adversary.”

As we noted earlier in this story, this new command is being set up as the Army has struggled to catch up to drone warfare developments abroad. China has invested heavily in lower-end drone warfare at the infantry level up to long-range one-way attack drones. The country’s capacity to mass produce all types of drones rapidly on gigantic scales remains a real concern, too. This is not lost on U.S. Army leadership.

“We are behind on long-range sensing and long-range launched-effect strike,” Maj. Gen. James (Jay) Bartholomees, commanding general of the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division, told us last year at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) annual symposium. “We absolutely need to build this capability quickly. We need to test it in our region; we also need to work with our allies and partners to do the same.”

The Army, it seems, is still trying to figure this all out.

Given that 7th ID MDC-PAC is essentially only a day old, there is a long way to go before the Army can draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of this concept. There are still many unknowns regarding what kind of drones the division has and is seeking, how many they need and the timelines for procurement. Regardless, setting up a new unit concentrating on melding drone warfare with the maneuver capabilities of Stryker brigades is a clear indication that the Army realizes it has to change how it operates to succeed in a Pacific fight.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

Ross Harrison, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, says that Iran’s renewed missile strikes on Israel aim to restore deterrence without reigniting full scale war.

Alan Titchmarsh’s comments came to light as he described a typical Saturday, which might include a shopping trip using something a BBC star has reportedly said they don’t like

Alan Titchmarsh has taken a swipe at a BBC Radio 2 star who “lives in London” over alleged comments about a vehicle he owns. Alan’s remarks came as he described a typical Saturday with his wife, Alison, following the couple’s recent move to a new home in Surrey after “living in Hampshire around farmland for 40 years”.

By 7am, the Ground Force legend is brewing up a cuppa for Alison and is “up and at ’em”, tackling a crossword to keep his mind sharp before heading outside to check his beloved garden.

Come 11am, the pair might venture out for a spot of shopping, and for that, it appears they rely on their trusty four-by-fours. However, Alan claims one BBC star is far from impressed by the vehicles.

The radio host in question apparently “slags them off”, yet Alan and Alison need them, particularly when navigating their local potholes — pointing out that the host is based in the capital.

He told The Telegraph: “Ali and I might head out and do a bit of [homeware] shopping. We’ve lived in Hampshire around farmland for 40 years, so both of us have four-by-fours. It’s all right when Jeremy Vine slags them off, but he lives in London.

“Out here, we need them! If you saw our potholes! When the two of us are driving, we’re almost always locked in conversation but I play music when I’m alone – either Classic FM, Radio 3 or Radio 4.

“The car picks up my iPhone music and I often listen to the score for the latest series of All Creatures Great and Small by Alexandra Harwood. It’s lovely.”

Keen cyclist Jeremy previously documented drivers breaking traffic laws and shared these on social media in an effort to spotlight the dangers faced by cyclists.

However, he abandoned this practice after suffering online “trolling”. He revealed on X: “I’m stopping my cycling videos. The trolling just got too bad. They have had well over 100 million views, but in the end the anger they generate has genuinely upset me.”

Indeed, it reportedly got so bad that he received death threats for posting videos of drivers, with some cruelly dubbing him “England’s biggest ***hole”.

He said: “Some of the biggest videos were actually about the smallest incidents, like someone turning left in front of me.

“People are happy to discuss it and I actually think that we’d all be safer if we all understood each other. People are going to drive 4x4s in Kensington and whatnot, but they need to have a bit of care for me on a bicycle.

“You might be in total control when you pass close by, but the person on a bicycle doesn’t know that. I just hope I was part of a dialogue about it.”