Last week marked the conclusion of the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games. Sadly, most people didn’t even know the games had begun. Competitors achieved great feats of human ability every event was inspirational.
Yet most people couldn’t tell you the name of a single Paralympic athlete.
The Olympic Ideal is a wonderful thing. Whether you agree with the operations of the International Olympic Committee or the International Paralympic Committee, the true spirit of the games is the achievement of the apex of human physical possibility and the coming-together of nations.
I am always saddened to find that, for some reason, two games with identical philosophies are given vastly different amounts of respect by the general public and the media — especially when such great things occur in both.
Look at what took place at these Paralympic Games. In the men’s 1500-meter race, the top four runners all finished with times faster than that of the first-place runner from the Olympic Games, which occurred a month earlier.
On the podium were Baka Abdellatif of Algeria with gold, Demisse Tamiru of Ethiopia with silver and Henry Kirwa of Kenya with bronze.
For anyone who thinks that Paralympic athletes are slower, untrained, boring recreational athletes, you didn’t watch the Paralympic Games. Archers shoot with their feet. Blind athletes play a ball game where they must hear the ball to intercept it. Cyclists cycle all the same and runners run all the same. These athletes are extremely talented, and sadly, often aren’t recognized as such.
It should also be widely known that Iran’s only Paralympic cyclist, Bahman Golbarnezhad, died at the age of 48 in competition. He left behind a wife and a son. This athlete, like many others both able bodied and not, dedicated countless hours and pain to his art.
For Paralympic athletes, the Olympic experience has never quite been what it should be. They are thrown in after the able-bodied Olympics, lose mass media coverage and have their funding cut exponentially. But they still find it in themselves to give the same blood, sweat and tears to do what they do.
I thank them for being people of such great positivity, and it is cruel to let them be merely a whisper of some event after the Olympics that people only read about when something interesting has happened. These athletes are beautiful models of human ability and heart — why don’t we cheer for them? The fact that they work with their impairments and still come out as champions should be more than enough to prove their quality of spirit to you.
Jordan Marcell is a 19-year-old studio photography and linguistic anthropology sophomore from Geismar, Louisiana.