Breathe
By Barbara Anderson
The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games ended yesterday.
First, the good stuff:
● This is the time when many people without disabilities are getting to know other living conditions, high-performance athletes in extremely demanding sporting events.
● There was better coverage than in previous editions, although not of all 22 disciplines, which would have been a genuine act of inclusion.
● The social media accounts of the International Paralympic Committee were encouraged to play with humor (not black, by the way) around athletes and competitions. It was a big controversy especially on their Tik Tok account, but it was handled with a subtlety that the disabled athletes themselves viralized the memes.
● The opening was emotional in a good way from the music, the performances and the inclusion of the transversality of human nature was there: far from the 'last supper drag' controversy of the standard games opening, having people of sexual diversity was a welcome nod.
● The Paralympic Refugee Athletes team doubled its presence versus Tokyo 2020. In this edition there were 8 athletes from six countries, representing 120 million forcibly displaced people worldwide.
Mexico
● The amount of money allocated to award Paralympic athletes is the same as for Olympic athletes: 3 mdp for gold, 2 mdp for silver and 1 mdp for bronze.
● For the first time an athlete with an intellectual disability was added to the Paralympic team: Citli Salinas, in swimming.
● 11 brands partnered with the Mexican Paralympic Committee (Copame) and contributed a total of $10 million pesos (a quarter of the state budget): Toyota, Bimbo, Uber, Mostkoff, Allianz, CitiBanamex, Titan Sports, Coca-Cola, P&G, Meta and Allianz.
The bad
At a general level:
● Fewer athletes made it to the games in this edition: 4,400 versus 4,520 in Tokyo 2020 (despite the impasse of the pandemic that took time away from preparation).
● Paris did not live up to its promise of becoming a fully accessible city: while the Paralympic Village was a display of fixtures and fittings, the rest of the city was not. Only 25% of the public transport system is accessible, and 4 out of 10 public buildings were fully accessible.
With Mexico:
● Mexican athletes, had to train in a six-year term where the promotion of sports was marked by budgetary restrictions, administrative disorder and lack of coordination with sports federations. Since 2018, support for high performance sport has decreased by more than half according to México Evalúa.
There is no pool of new athletes. Only 20% of those who went to Paris were making their debut. As Nelson Vargas published in his column a few days ago: "athletes are very long-lived and the methodology for their evolution has not advanced. Although these great veterans continue to do good things and even win medals, there is a need to develop talents".
● If in Mexican schools 48% of primary schools and 69% of secondary schools do not have physical education teachers, there is even less opportunity for students with disabilities to develop their sports skills.
The country has no Paralympic sports teams (soccer, sitting volleyball, rugby, goalball or basketball). Training and support is focused only on individual sports, with aquatic sports monopolizing over other disciplines.
● We fell in the international Paralympic ranking: in Tokyo 2020 we were ranked 19th in the world, with 22 medals (7 of them gold) and in this edition we dropped to 30th position (with only 3 gold medals).
The usual
The profiles of each of the participants and winners at the Paralympics began with 'in spite of ....' He was abandoned by his family because of his disability, however...", "fate was not able to overcome his resilience"..."... " willpower was stronger than the lack of her legs", ... "against all odds, she wins a medal despite...".
These are the enabling narratives, the chronicles from 'normality' looking with wonder at disability.
They are speeches where the focus is that 'the obstacles and barriers made them who they are', when in reality they are great athletes to think about the barriers .
To make a person heroic because he swims with only one arm, invalidates all the effort he made, all the 'no's' he encountered along the way, detracts from his discipline and his high performance preparation without the same support as any other athlete in countries where sport does not matter except in the week of these international events.
This is the famous 'inspirational porn' (and I love it when I say it, seeing eyebrows raised suspiciously). This concept was pioneered by Australian activist Stella Young where she explained the error of using a person's disability as a source of inspiration for the rest of society. Disability is conceived from the negative and as something undesirable, therefore, living with one makes you an exceptional being that motivates inspiration in the rest of society. "I don't know if I could do archery like her, she doesn't even have arms!
There is still this kind of narrative about overcoming disability based on the idea that disability is a bad thing that must be overcome.
A German athlete in an interview at the end of her gold medal in Paris said, "If you're going to be inspired by me, be inspired by the fact that I have four university degrees, that I'm 39 years old and in the best shape of my life, and that I'm championing women in sport. But I don't want to inspire you because, 'Oh, look, she overcame the accident she had with a grader.'"
A Paris radio station did a survey to find out why people watched the Paralympics: the vast majority did so to see people overcome their disabilities and not to watch elite sport.
Did you watch the Paralympics, with what intention?
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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