Equality is one of the core values of the Paralympic Games, which opened in Paris last week, with a spectacular parade along the Champs-Élysées.
The Games deserve to be celebrated – and watched – not just for offering displays of often incredible athleticism but because they play such an important role in breaking down barriers of discrimination. They are also a stirring reminder of what we are all capable of, when we refuse to accept seeming limitations.
After Vancouver hosted the Paralympics in 2010, a study conducted by researchers at the University of British Columbia found that 23 per cent of Canadian employers said the Games increased their willingness to hire people with disabilities. Other studies have similarly shown the important role the Paralympics play in changing people’s attitudes toward disability.
That is why media coverage of the events are so important. The Paralympics in Paris will be the first to have live broadcast coverage of all 22 sports. In Tokyo, three years ago, 19 sports were broadcast live. At Rio 2016, only 15 were.
Forecasts suggested more than four-billion people worldwide will tune in to these Paralympics, more than the combined audience for Tokyo and Rio.
It’s a long way from the Paralympics’ beginnings as a competition in Britain for wheelchair athletes injured during the Second World War.
The Stoke Mandeville Games, named after a hospital for veterans with spinal-cord injuries, featured 16 servicemen and women who competed in archery. They were held on the same day as the Opening Ceremony of the London Games in 1948.
By 1960, when the first official Paralympic Games took place in Italy, the event featured 400 athletes from 23 countries. The Games have been held every four years ever since. They have been held in the same host city as the Olympics since the Summer Games in Seoul in 1988 and the Winter Games in Albertville, France in 1992.
The timing of the first Stoke Mandeville Games was no coincidence. But in recent years, some have argued that the Paralympics should be held before or during the regular Olympics. Holding them after, according to this argument, makes them seem like an afterthought.
The International Paralympic Committee has rejected both ideas. It has said staging the Games before the Olympics risks making them look like a rehearsal. Holding both at the same time presents too many logistical challenges for host cities – accommodating the massive number of athletes being a primary one – and presents the risk of media coverage favouring Olympic events over Paralympic ones.
An estimated 1.3-billion people, a sixth of the world’s population, have a “significant” disability, according to the World Health Organization. In Canada, eight-million people over the age of 15 have a disability that limits their daily activity, Statistics Canada says. Yet ableism, the discrimination and social prejudice against people with disabilities, remains widespread.
Breaking through the barrier of that discrimination is one reason to watch the Paralympics. But there’s another. While the Paralympics’ wider social mission may stir your conscience, the events will have you on the edge of your seat, the way only the most thrilling sporting events can.
Quebec’s Aurélie Rivard, Canada’s most decorated Paralympic swimmer, is competing in her fourth Games. She won a bronze on Thursday and a silver on Sunday, her 11th and 12th Paralympic medals. On Wednesday, Germany’s Markus Rehm, nicknamed “The Blade Jumper,” aims to extend his world record in the men’s T64 long jump of 8.64 metres. The Oakville, Ont. wheelchair racer Austin Smeenk, who set a men’s T34 800-metre world record in June, vies for his first Paralympic medals this week.
There is plenty of reason to watch 126 Canadian athletes compete in 18 sports at these Games. But even before this summer’s Games began, Canada’s Paralympic athletes had already scored yet another major victory. For the first time, they are finally getting paid for winning medals: $20,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze – just as Canada’s Olympians have been rewarded since the Beijing Games in 2008.
It’s one more reason to cheer on the Canadians and celebrate all that is possible in sports.