Paralympics

Paralympics

Olympic implications

If we take this inclusionary ideal further, we come upon an interesting question.

If "it's the taking part that counts", do we need the Paralympics?

The Paralympic Games are equivalent to the Olympics, but restricted to athletes with physical disabilities. They include traditional athletic events as well as categories like wheelchair racing and wheelchair basketball.

The Paralympics seem a perfectly reasonable idea. They allow disabled athletes to compete in events better suited to their needs. They can highlight the bravery of some athletes who have overcome crippling injury or disease and gone on to train to a high standard.

They also seem to convey the message that disabled athletes should not compete in the 'real' Olympics: is this discriminatory?

Making all athletes compete in a single Games would be the ultimate test of the 'taking part' ideal. Would disabled athletes be content if every event was won by able-bodied athletes? Or, as prosthetics and wheelchair technology are improved, would able-bodied athletes be happy if disabled athletes won every race?

Probably not. Applying the principle of inclusivity indiscriminately doesn't make much sense. Disabled and able-bodied athletes do not begin on an equal footing, and there is an extra dimension of technology in wheelchair sports that isn't found in their pedestrian equivalents.

Do disabled athletes cheat?

Paralympic and other wheelchair sports have strict rules about the mobility of the athletes and the construction of the wheelchairs.

It's possible to assess a physical disability, but what about mental disabilities? At the 2000 Summer Paralympics, the Spanish basketball team was disqualified after winning gold. It had been discovered that most of the team members did not have learning difficulties as they claimed.

The Paralympics had been relatively scandal-free before this event. Some Paralympians have been caught doping, using the same drugs as an able-bodied athlete would use. (The list of banned drugs in the Paralympics is the same as the Olympic list.)

Some Paralympians and disability-rights speakers take doping scandals as positive news. They say it proves disabled people can achieve the same things as anyone else, including cheating. People, they argue, can identify more with a role model who has made mistakes.