Erasmus28

“What’s in a name?”

Shakespeare poses a valid question. The word ‘Paralympic’ derives from the Greek ‘para’ for ‘next to’, denoting an equivalent competition to the Olympics; a disputable statement and one which could present the question of whether we are in fact, smelling the right rose?

Do the Paralympic Games really run parallel to the Olympics or is it simply seen as a sub-section, consisting of disabled people ‘giving it a go’?  For many years we have witnessed the buzz of the Olympic Movement so why does it seem that the Paralympics still gets the back seat when it comes to media and public attention.

Don’t get me wrong, times have certainly changed since the first Paralympic Games in Rome in the 1960’s. Society has accepted that Paralympians are truly talented athletes and not just a select few asked to take part as a method of sustaining political correctness.

Disabled BBC Sports News producer and Chair of Disabled Target Shooting Great Britain (DTSGB) Rikki Singh remembers when the Paralympics had “a half an hour television slot six months after the Games had taken place”, so media coverage of the event has certainly evolved but some argue that there is still not enough being done to improve the status of the Paralympic Games and the Athletes themselves. Although Singh acknowledges that nowadays even “able-bodied athletes are taking Paralympians more seriously”.

Despite this, Singh believes that although the Paralympics may be more accepted now than it was thirty years ago, “there is still a discrepancy in the funding” and the fact that the Paralympians are “more successful than the Olympians” just does not come into it.

Singh admits to being able to see both sides however; as a Journalist he argues that “you can only cover news if you get news…it has got to be a two way flow”, he suggests that disability sport itself could do more to promote itself, releasing more news about upcoming events and results to the media.

The Paralympic World Cup is currently taking place in Manchester as a way of ‘bridging the gap between the four yearly Paralympic Games’. Singh considers this to be very important as there seems to be the “tendency to forget about Paralympic sport between Olympics”.

Disability sport has been set apart from ‘able-bodied’ sport over the years under many names: ‘special needs sport’, ‘handicapped sport’ and ‘adopted sport’ being but a few.

The classification of Paralympic sport is separated by function which does not appear to aid the integration process, classifying athletes in terms of their ‘type’ of disability, including: ‘paraplegics, tetraplegics, amputees, blind and cerebral palsied individuals, those with intellectual disability and lastly, ‘les-autres’ (the others). Such divides within disability sport does not help to promote equality and could even encourage discrimination within the ‘disabled’ community.

A Paralympic Talent day at Sheffield’s English Institute of Sport was an excellent example of this, whereby a short bus journey opened my eyes to a new kind of competitiveness; one between disabled people, in a competition of ‘who has it worse off’.  After being divided into our ‘disability’ groups, we had a ten minute drive to another facility, a 25 year old Paraplegic woman enquired as to how I came to be ‘disabled’ myself; after explaining that it was caused at birth she turned to me and said “well you don’t know any different then, do you?”, as if to suggest that I was lucky. She was in the Army and after having had a few ‘too many’ on one occasion, had fallen from some height, severely damaging her spine. I could not help but sense bitterness towards me and my lucky congenital anomaly.

One cannot help but think that that such strict classification, that can cause segregation  and even discrimination within disability sport itself, even as its attempts is a way to sustain fairness and equality. Surely this can only cause people to lose sight of the ‘big picture’.

Angus Scott, presenter at Setanta Sport says: “part of the difficulty is the different number of categories of disability for various events. That makes it hard to follow.” But could this really be a reason for Paralympic sport to receive less attention?  If disabled athletes cannot accept one another, can they expect the rest of the world to?

The Paralympians brought home 102 medals in 2008. Is it possible that star-status can now be found in Paralympic sport? 2012 is approaching and will be a true test of Great Britain’s patriotism to its athletes. Scott believes that “it receives a very fair amount of coverage” and that nowadays “there are some Paralympic superstars!”

In terms of media attention both Scott and Singh give recognition to the BBC and its efforts to promoting and televising the Paralympics. Scott acknowledges that “the BBC has shown huge commitment to the Paralympics and good for them. There are great stories there.”

Singh also recognises this claiming that: “The situation is much better than it was.”

“Coverage continues to improve.  Organisations such as the BBC are treating Elite level disability sport very seriously and the athletes are recognised as being the elite sports people that they are.”

However Singh admits that “we still have a long way to go and the sports must take a more proactive role in promoting themselves; in the way that disability tennis and DTSGB do.”

So perhaps the Paralympics do not receive equal attention but it seems like there are people and organisations, such as the BBC who are certainly trying to change this. In what seems to be a increasingly patriotic society we can only hope that by 2012 the public and the media’s preconceptions about Paralympic sport can be put aside and the Games can be recognised, as it is named, ‘next to’ the Olympics as an equal.