Excerpt from: The Smart Set (click for full article)
This is the world of goalball, the most amazing sport you have probably never seen. And goalball is played at the Paralympics, the most extraordinary (and second largest) multi-sporting event in the world. In the United States you may have heard something about the Paralympics this summer while watching the Olympics. But in this year’s host city of London, Paralympics news was a bit bigger. In London Oscar Pistorius, the South African “blade runner,” is a household name, but so are British swimmer Ellie Simmonds, the players on the wheelchair rugby teams, the wheelchair basketball players, and the goalball players. In 2012, disability sports have become “real sports,” at least in the UK — as well as China and the Russian Federation, first and second place, respectively, in the Paralympics medal count.
Deciphering why Americans don’t know much about the Paralympics, and sports such as goalball, is tricky. We’re forced to consider that we relegate disability sports and, by extension their elite athletes, to something less than “real” sports and “real” athletes. If elite disability sports were just sideshows where fans applauded out of respect and admiration for the will of the players, that would be one thing. But in the UK the success of the Paralympics has launched an important and sometimes thorny debate on the relationship between sports and politics. Britain’s most decorated Paralympian, Tanni Grey-Thompson, is now a member of the House of Lords and an outspoken advocate for the rights of the disabled. And this year when George Osborne, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer and the face of welfare reform and cuts to disability services in the UK, showed up to hand out medals at the Paralympics he was booed by a crowd of 80,000 in the Olympic Park.
Comments