The 10th Paralympiad will have worldwide sponsors, network coverage, and 12 days of people asking: “What are these games?”
In terms of ultimate recognition, there isn’t much separating the Paralympics from the Olympics these days. The medals are just as golden to the athletes, its worldwide sponsors (all three of them) as recognizable to TV viewers, and after the games, the entire congregation of elite athletes troops off in their star-spangled suits to be received at the White House.
If you want to start drawing distinctions, consider that the winners of the US Olympic marathon trials get prizes of $100,000—three times the annual budget of the US blind cycling team, which will compete in this year’s Paralympics, which open in Atlanta, Georgia 11 days after the Olympics close.
But Peter Paulding, the coach of the US blind cycling team, doesn’t begrudge the money doled out the Olympic trial victors. He’s more concerned about the Paralympics crisis of recognition.
While 80 percent of the US population recognizes the term “Special Olympics,” the Paralympics, in which the world’s best blind and wheelchair athletes, amputees, and those with cerebral palsy compete only register with four percent.
“Anything other than the Olympics is viewed as the Special Olympics,” says Paulding, who often is made to feel like Jerry Lewis en route to a telethon than a mentor of top blind athletes. “I’m constantly being told, ‘Hey, good luck with your kids when you go down to Atlanta.’”
Paralympics media relations director Carolyn Koch deals constantly with the image problem.
“Until people actually see the athletes competing, they won’t really know what these games are,” Koch says. “Having the games on U.S soil for the first time will help.”
The U.S. Olympic committee has absorbed the Paralympics, which Paulding hopes will lead people to equating the two. But that hasn’t happened yet.
Atlanta could be the place where that finally starts to happen.
With a surge in the disabled sports movement, the 10th Paralympiad is taking on a massive coming out quality: Home Depot and IBM are contributing millions of dollars; CBS is devoting four hours of coverage; and the steady increase of competition levels together with a more competitive streamlining of the games should, in one way or another, make in-roads to America’s 49 million people who are disabled.
“We want the 1996 Paralympic Games to do for the disabled sports movement what the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles did for the Olympic movement,” said Atlanta Paralympic Organizing Committee (APOC) president Any Fleming. “We want a considerable success that raises the platform of support to set up great growth for the future.”
The Games
It will surprise many to learn that the Paralympics are as old as the gold medals of Muhammad Ali and Wilma Rudolph: Rome hosted the first games in 1960—eight years before the first Special Olympics.
The games are the zenith for elite athletes with disabilities. Since Rome, where only wheelchair athletes participated, the competition has widened to include the blind, amputees, people with cerebral palsy, and people with dwarfism.
In Atlanta, beginning on August 15, more than 3,500 athletes (a 40 percent increase from the Barcelona games of 1992) from 120 nations will compete in 17 different sports, 14 of which are standard Olympic events that will be staged in the same venues.
Slight modifications are made to several sports to accommodate some athletes’ disabilities. In wheelchair tennis, for example, the ball may bounce twice before being returned. Some sports, such as cycling, judo, and goalball, are geared towards the sight-impaired while only wheelchair athletes compete in basketball and fencing. Soccer is played by seven-man teams of persons with varying degrees of cerebral palsy. There will be both seated and standing competitions in volleyball and table tennis. Track and field and swimming draw competitors from all five disability categories.
Two new demonstration sports—quad rugby (to be played in wheelchairs) and yachting—will broaden the scope of competition. In addition, the games will include the precision games of boccia and lawn bowling.
The major difference between the Olympic and the Paralympics is the sheer number of events. The five disability groups, all well represented by worldwide organizations, result in the running of more than 700 total events to the Olympics 330.
The line between inclusion and keeping the games competitive is a fine one. A wheelchair racer and a blind runner shouldn’t have to go head to head, but how many versions of the 100-meter dash should there be?
“This is one of the real sticky issues in the movement: athletic classification—who competes against who” said Fleming. “What we’re seeing is, as technology improves, and as athletes improve, a lot of the old distinctions become less important. What I see in the future is a gradual reduction in the number of competitive classifications.”
The trend towards fewer categories is called uniform classification. This should intensify competition and further distinguish the games from the Special Olympics’ esteem-building practices, but it’s a pruning that requires a delicate touch for the organizers, and patience for the athletes.
For example, Mike Castle of Ann Arbor, Michigan, won the Paralympic marathon trials in Los Angeles in March, but must wait until after the track and field trials in May before he knows if one of the 105 spots on the track team is his.
“Our selection system is very complicated but very fair,” said Mark Lucas, Assistant Executive Director for the United States Association of Blind Athletes. “It’s a formula, not a quota.”
Sports are chosen upon a drop-rank system that evaluates the quality of each winning performance within its disability group. Lucas said that Castle’s “A-standard time” in the marathon of 3 hours, 4 minutes and a first place finish should put him on the team, and adds the Olympics do things the same way. It’s no longer enough to win your trail; you must meet minimum performance benchmarks as well—for the Paralympic marathon, a time better than 3 hours, 10 minutes. Still, no one doubted that Olympic marathoner Bob Kempainen had $100,000 and a trip to Atlanta when he crossed the finish line to win his trials.
Perceptions
Just as the records are trotted out, just as comparisons to the Olympics standards are made, another image problem pops up: How is the public to view these accomplishments?
Sympathy is scorned. Paralympians want to be seen as athletes, not as symbols of courage. This may be ground zero for the anger of the disabled sports movement: We are athletes, not inspiration. Or, as a world-class discuss thrower said in a Sports Illustrated feature last year, “I don’t do human interest.”
So where does that leave the potential fan in the supposed untapped market? What if those sports consumers are impressed more by what is overcome than by what is accomplished? APOC president Fleming feels Paralympians should not shun praise for being an inspiration to others.
“I have been an athlete and have had the kind of knee-jerk response after finishing a race and having someone only appreciate me for the inspiration I gave them,” Fleming says. “But when you think about the most memorable athletic performances, the ones that come to mind are the Olympic performances where there’s a combination of skill and the human qualities that went into it.
“What kind of courage did it take Jesse Owens to do what he did in 1936?” Fleming asks. “The most celebrated athletes are those who combine athletic feats with human drama. We have to tell our athletes that as long as they’re receiving respect for their accomplishments, they ought to feel equally as good for the respect they’re receiving as a human being.”
If Paralympians insist on being judged solely on athletic feats, would it be fair to write off single-leg amputee Arnie Boldt’s 6’8” high jump for being a foot short of the world record?
Most fans would say yes.
Olympic-level performance would seem to carry with it a certain degree exclusively. No runner can dominate every distance the way Dave Larson swept the 100, 200, 400, and 800-meter wheelchair races in Barcelona in 1992. Larson, a top wheelchair racer with cerebral palsy will race these and the 1,500 meters in Atlanta.
Ann Cody, who now works for APOC and will not compete this year, has dominated events from the 400 to the 10,000 meters. Cody took a bronze in Barcelona in the 10,000 in a time nearly two minutes faster than the men’s non-disabled world record. How should fans evaluate such a time?
It is also clear that some athletes may be wary of how success in the Paralympics weighs next to the gold standards of the Olympics or professional sports.
Marathoner Mike Castle is a B3, a sight-impaired runner with enough vision not to need a guide. He is an avid biker.
“I guess I really don’t know how I feel about running in the Paralympics, seeing as how I can do most things a normally sighted person can do,” said Castle. “I guess one reason I am running is to find out how I feel about them.”
A Pam Fernandes Rookie Card?
Yes, you can get one. The insurance company ITT Hartford sponsors Break Away, the first-ever, corporate sponsored disabled sports team. Fernandes, a blind cyclist who won a silver in the 1994 World Championships, is now gunning for the Paralympics with the help of Mike Rosenberg, who pilots her tandem bike.
The Brighton, Massachusetts native is also the project manager for ITT Hartford’s Break Away project, which includes coordinating an ESPN show, a world wide web page (www.itthartford.com/corporate/news_issues/b_away/index.html), and promoting the accomplishments of its team members.
“We’re the first to put together a multi-sport, multi-disabled, multi-ethnic and cross regional team of athletes,” said Fernandes. The team helps by supplying clothing, financial help for training and competition, and promotional materials like calendars and, yes, trading cards.
In exchange, ITT Hartford, which is a major provider of group disability insurance, wants top-level athletes who are articulate, positive, and, above all, employed. While this image seems more geared towards the business world than sports fans, it’s a start. Very few disabled athletes, Fernandes said, make enough from competing not to have to work.
Despite the lack of shoe contracts, the competition is much more fierce, according to Fernandes. “As disabled sports grows, it’s going to get stronger, particularly in the more traditional sports like track and field.”
The Future
It is in sports like wheelchair road racing that substantial prize money is starting to appear. The winner of the wheelchair division of the Boston Marathon gets $12,000 with bonuses for breaking the world record. The separate start that the Boston Marathon gives the wheelchair division has yielded the sort of visibility that brings the recognition that leads to prize money.
And just as in women’s golf and tennis, it’s money that will drive the movement. A lack of it thus far has hurt. For example, while the United States Olympic Committee will pick up the tab for the Paralympians in Atlanta, for most coaches, including Peter Paulding of the U.S. blind cycling team, there is no money to get athletes to competitions throughout the year that would strengthen their performances.
But the overall movement, as seen in sports like cycling, is catching on as it appeals to both the disabled and non-disabled. Since all blind cycling is done on tandem bikes, sighted pilots are needed to guide the blind “stokers.” Paulding says that he has nearly 20 non-disabled Category 1 and 2 pilots to bolster his team. This is significant: Riding a tandem with a spouse or friend might get a blind athlete involved, but it won’t get him to the elite level, Paulding said.
The Massachusetts Association for the Blind, with help from Nike, is building up the sight-impaired category of the Boston Marathon. This event also attracts considerable non-dsiabled involvement in the form of people who want to run as guides, volunteer for support positions, and so on.
This kind of involvement at the Paralympics—there will be 12,000 volunteers working in Atlanta—may help spread the message as well as network coverage. Not that an official media outlet and coverage by CBS (two-hour recaps broadcast on consecutive weekends), Sports Illustrated, and ESPN won’t help.
What matters most as far as the Paralympics is that the games, the world’s second largest sporting event after the Olympics, are in this country this year. And it is that which will make disabled sports widely known in America for the first time.
The Players
Despite its image and recognition problems, the Paralympics showcases remarkable athletic feats.
Arnie Boldt of Canada who is a single-leg amputee, has high jumped 6 feet, 8 _ inches.
Tony Volpentest of Edmunds, Washington, has world records in the 100-meter dash (11.63 seconds) and the 200-meter dash (23.07), which he set in Barcelona in 1992. Volpentest was born without hands or feet and competes with the aid of high-tech prosthetics.
Marla Runyan is ranked among the top 10 of all U.S. heptathalon athletes, despite being blind.
Paralympic power lifter Kim Brownfield bench-presses 602 pounds. The world record is 675 pounds.
Scott Hollonback was an all-around athlete before being hit by a drunk driver in 1984. From his hospital bed, he watched the finals of the wheelchair 800 meters and in an instant could surmise his athletic future. Hollonbeck, who lives in Champaign, Illinois, has gone on to become one of the top racers in the world.
Trischa Zorn, a sight-impaired swimmer, missed making the 1992 Olympic team by 1/100 of the second. She went on to win 10 gold and two silver medals in the Paralympics, setting six world records. Her time of 1:09.89 in the 100-meter backstroke, is nine seconds off the Olympic record. Zorn, an elementary school teacher originally from Mission Viejo, California, was the first-ever blind athlete to receive a full scholarship at the University of Nebraska. She was one of the 11 finalists for the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year.
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