Noah Berlatsky - The Olympics

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

The Olympics / Noah Berlatsky, Book Editor.

pages cm. -- (At issue)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7377-7398-9 (hardcover) -- ISBN 978-0-7377-7399-6 (paperback)

1. Olympics. I. Berlatsky, Noah.

GV721.5.O39275 2016

796.48--dc23

2015026887

Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 19 18 17 16 15

Contents

Brent Toderian

Dan Wetzel

Rob Draper

Ian Steadman

McKenzie Funk

Goel Pinto

Ilya Somin

Tracy Smith

Jeff Sagnip

Giedre Steikunaite

Michelle K. Wolf

Associated Press

T he Paralympic Games are an international sports competition for athletes with physical disabilities such as paraplegia or quadriplegia, amputation, vision impairment, small stature, and other similar disabilities. The Paralympic Games are separate from the Special Olympics, which are for athletes with mental or developmental disabilities.

The Paralympic Games originated at the 1948 Olympics in London, when sixteen injured veterans in wheelchairs took part in an archery competition. Known as the Stoke Mandeville Games, the contest officially became the Paralympics in Rome in 1960, when four hundred athletes from twenty-three countries competed. The games were then held every four years. In 1976, the first Winter Paralympics were held. Beginning in 1988, the Paralympic Games have been held immediately after the Summer and Winter Olympics.

The Paralympic Games have achieved a great degree of visibility in recent years because of South African sprint runner Oscar Pistorius, both of whose legs are amputated below the knee. Pistorius was a paralympic champion who then sought to enter able-bodied events. Despite objections by sports administrative organizations, which argued that Pistoriuss artificial limbs gave him an unfair advantage, he was finally allowed to run in the 2012 Summer Olympics, where he won gold in the 400-metre race and the 4x400 metres relay race. His success brought unprecedented attention to disabled athletes.

Perhaps in part because of Pistoriuss success, the Paralympics have become a source of some controversy. Those who support the games see it as an opportunity to highlight the accomplishments of the disabled and to draw needed attention, and perhaps funding, to sports for those with disability. For example, Kath Vickery, a woman who is blind, was quoted at the BBC expressing enthusiasm about the 2012 London Paralympics: Im excited because I think the Paralympics could elevate the standing of disability sport in the UK and raise its profile, she said.1

Stella Young at ABC in Australia also argues that the Paralympics is important for people with disabilities. When we hear athletes say theres nothing like the Paralympics, they dont just mean the competition,2 Young says. She added:

Last Tuesday I popped into the athletes village and what I found absolutely took my breath away. Or, more accurately, I felt a familiar kind of release in my chest, one that Ive felt before at disability conferences and events. It can only really be described as the moment you realise youre in an environment where you can truly be yourself; the feeling of being among your people, if you will.3

Young states that for someone with disability, the Paralympics is Acceptance heaven.

Other writers, however, have criticized the Paralympics and argued that they dont advance the cause of disabled people. Daphnee Denis writing for Slate, for example, argues that separating the Paralympics and the Olympics makes disabled athletes less visible. She suggests that the two games should be combined into a single Olympics, with some events for the disabled. Denis points to goalball, a sport for visually impaired athletes. Goalball does not receive much attention, because it does not mirror an able-bodied sport. Goalball athletes struggle to fund their training. To provide them with professional funding, Denis says, there needs to be an audience for goalball....4 A merger with the Olympics proper, she feels, would provide that audience. In a merger, disabled athletes would contribute to their nations medal count and, By earning gold for their country, Paralympians would finally be seen for what they really are: true champions.5

Robert Jones, writing for The Guardian, argues that in many cases the Paralympics does not help disabled people but instead increases the stigma they face. Regular Olympians, he says, are recognized as exceptional. No one expects every ablebodied person they meet on the street to run as fast as Usain Bolt or Florence Griffith Joyner. But, Jones adds, its commonplace to hear if he can do it so can you as a rebuke or encouragement to disabled people.6 This can be especially dangerous, Jones says, when the spectacle of Paralympians is used to suggest that people with disabilities do not need government aid or medical help.

The remainder of At Issue: The Olympics examines other controversial issues around the Olympics, including whether the Olympic games benefit host cities, whether the games are environmentally dangerous, whether the Special Olympics benefit people with mental disabilities, and whether doping and steroid use should be allowed in the games. As with the controversy surrounding the Paralympics, these discussions highlight the importance of the Olympics and differing viewpoints on the Olympic spirit.