For those who don’t know, the opening ceremony of the 2008 Paralympic Games will be held tomorrow in Beijing. The Paralympics have been around in some form since the late 1940s, but the current version, where the event is held in the same city as the Olympics, began in 1988.
I am sure that equality is the genesis behind the establishment of the Paralympics. However, in the past couple of weeks, I haven’t seen much equality in the coverage given to the Paralympics. If the Paralympics are really focused on equality, then we would place as much importance on the results of the Games as we do with the Olympics. However, we don’t, and instead the Paralympics is reduced to a series of puff pieces in the media.
The Chinese government, who is always on the lookout for propaganda, has seized on the Paralympics as way of promoting its benevolence. Check out this article on the official Paralympic website.
The Olympics was all about personalities – superman Phelps, sexy Stephanie, elegant Nastia and forlorn Liu. But I do not know a single Paralympian as they have been reduced to a nameless mush of one-legged and wheelchair-bound athletes. Sure, if someone wins gold then they will briefly make a name for themselves in their home country. However, for the most part, the Paralympians are the unfortunate souls who keep on trying, but to hell with learning their names.
Through being dwarfed by the mega-size of the Olympics, the Paralympics shows that the world is really not a fair place. This is a real shame because the achievements of Paralympians are in many ways more admirable than the achievements of their able-bodied counterparts. Take Natalia Partyka as an example (I finally learnt the name of a Paralympian), the Polish table tennis player who is competing at both the Olympics and Paralympics. To witness a woman serve a table tennis ball with only one arm is truly incredible, but let us focus on the fact that she is a really outstanding performer. Partyka beat Singapore’s Li Jiawei, the World No.6, at the World Championships this year and will start as the No.1 seed at the Paralympics.
 Polish table tennis player Natalia Partyka. Picture from Daylife.
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