Want to hear a story featuring one of the straight-up absolute biggest legends we’ve had the good fortune to come in contact with in a long, long time? Then boy, are you ever in luck.
Dylan Alcott is the current world number one wheelchair tennis player in the quad category. And there’s fair daylight between him and the number two.
The Australian-born sportsman cleaned up at the recent Australian Open, steamrolling his way through the Quad Wheelchair Singles tournament (contested in a round-robin format) emerging undefeated as the 2016 champion – his second Australian Open win on the trot.
In fact, he’s won three major singles tournaments in his sport of choice, and attained the world number one ranking just under two years after returning to the sport as a professional. Prior to that? He was a gun wheelchair basketball player, and was part of the Australian National Team that won gold at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics, and silver at the 2012 London Paralympics.
Not a bad effort at all, really.
Alcott also abso-bloody-lutely loves music festivals, and his love of crowd surfing is absolutely fkn legendary. That’s how he met Ghostface Killah back in 2014.
Last night at Wu-Tang Clan‘s long-awaited show at Margaret Court Arena, Ghostface brought Alcott on-stage to spit a few hot rhymes with the rest of the Clan, in front of a packed house of people absolutely bloody enthralled by the whole scene.
Alcott KILLED it.
Big ups to my boy Ghostface Killah for inviting me onstage last night to spit with him and the Wu-Tang Clan.. Definition of a dream come true! Glad I could play a very small part in getting them in the country by writing a letter of reference to immigration.. Wutang is for the children RZA GZA Raekwon Masta Killa #wutang #wutangclan
Posted by Dylan Alcott on Tuesday, 23 February 2016
And it wasn’t just a friendly, familiar face that scored Alcott the gig-of-a-lifetime. Turns out he played a big role in helping Ghostface get into the country at all.
Speaking to us kind folk here at PEDESTRIAN.TV, Alcott explained the circumstances that lead him to meet the legendary lyricist back in 2014, and like the subjects of this story, it was far from ordinary.
“[I] originally met Ghostface when I crowd surfed at Meredith music festival and got on stage and rapped with him there. I did it the day after playing tennis for 24 hours straight to raise 100k for charity. One of the best moments of my life!”
Y’know. As you casually do.
As fate would have it, past transgressions proved to be something of a roadblock for Ghostface, along with Masta Killa, U-God, and Inspekta Deck when it came to securing visas for Wu-Tang‘s current ‘Strayan tour. So Dylan, being the legendary sort that he is, put in a good word.
“Ghostface, Masta Killa, U-God and Inspekta Deck couldn’t get in due to charges in the 90s.”
“So I wrote a character reference for Ghostface, who is one of the biggest gentleman and most talented guys I have ever met, and sent it to the Immigration Department. Although the heavy lifting was done, it must [have] helped as they got in.”
Which leads us to last night, and the cameo-to-end-all-cameos at a raucous gig in Melbourne.
And if all that combined simply isn’t enough for you, Alcott’s now looking forward to having a crack at gold in the Rio Olympics later this year.
Hell, you can even check out the dude’s excellent TEDx talk on normalising disability.
All winners here. Cheers, Dylan. You absolute, full donk, bloody ledge.
