Paralympic Games: from rehabilitating the war-wounded to celebrating diversity
For the first time, the Olympic and Paralympic Games have a single logo. However, while the latest information on the subject suggests that each event will have its own opening and closing ceremony, Paralympism and Olympism seem more closely associated than ever.
Sylvain Ferez, University of Montpellier and Sébastien Ruffie, University of the West Indies
Yet this was far from self-evident. The history of the Paralympic Games is a complex one, raising the question of the definition of disability. From sports Games organized solely for people with spinal injuries in wheelchairs (created in 1948), from the 1970s onwards they gradually came to include people with other types of impairment.
The form chosen for this summer's Paris events, with 22 parasports (the sports on the Paralympic Games program), is the result of a long process that began on July 29, 1948, when the XIV Olympiad kicked off in London. On that date, neurosurgeon Ludwig Guttmann organized an archery competition between 16 World War II veterans in wheelchairs with spinal injuries at the nearby Stoke Mandeville Hospital.
German-born Guttmann is the inventor of rehabilitative practices based on sports games. In the 1950s, his Stoke Games attracted increasing numbers of participants and began to take on an international dimension. Reserved for paralyzed wheelchair users, they were held every summer within the hospital grounds. In 1952, they welcomed a Dutch delegation, with 5 competitions on the program: archery, netball, javelin, table tennis and billiards; swimming was also demonstrated. In 1953, French, Australians, Canadians, Finns, Israelis and South Africans joined the event.
The Stoke Games continue to focus on rehabilitation, and Guttmann organizes an annual medical conference on advances in the treatment of spinal injuries.
Persistent medical logic
It was their relocation to Rome in 1960, in the wake of the Olympic Games, that partially changed the situation. Although the sporting dimension became more pronounced, they remained part of the world of rehabilitation for people with spinal injuries. This relocation was made possible thanks to links between Ludwig Guttmann and Antonio Maglio, an Italian colleague who founded a rehabilitation center for paraplegics near the Italian capital. 400 wheelchair athletes from 23 countries compete in eight disciplines. Benefiting from the Olympic infrastructure, they leave the hospital environment behind, but remain under medical supervision. The ministers who came to support the athletes bear witness to this. These "Para-Olympic Games" opened in the presence of the Italian Minister of Health, but without the Minister of Sport. The same thing happened four years later in Tokyo. The fact remains that a momentum had been set in motion that led to the creation of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) in 1989.
[More than 85,000 readers trust The Conversation newsletters to help them better understand the world's major issues. Subscribe today]
The Paralympic Games then became an IOC-recognized event involving athletes with various types of disability (actually "able otherwise"). Para no longer meant "for the paralyzed", but "parallel" to the Olympic Games.
But before that can happen, many quarrels will have to be overcome.
Competitive dynamics
In the 60s, voices were raised in favor of opening the sport to amputees and the blind, but the Stoke federation disapproved, remaining focused on wheelchair sport for people with spinal injuries. In 1964 in Tokyo, an "all-disabilities" sports event was held for non-paralyzed athletes alongside the Paralympic Games. In 1968, the Para-Olympic Games were held in Tel Aviv, but were still reserved for paralyzed wheelchair users. Gradually, however, the initial goal of rehabilitation gave way to a desire to get closer to the Olympic competitive scheme and the image of the champion.
Although Guttmann is opposed to this competitive perspective for all types of disability, the objective of athletes and certain national federations - including France - is inexorably moving towards distancing themselves from medical supervision in order to get closer to the sporting world and its national and international bodies.
Progressive reconciliation
The 1970s confirmed this shift, with competitions gradually accommodating new types of disability by categorizing athletes according to their abilities.
The aim is to enable them to participate, while ensuring equal opportunities and the competitive logic of sport. The integration of new sportsmen and women with specific characteristics means that we need to think about functional classifications in terms of their abilities and the impact these have on their performance.
In 1972, at the Heidelberg Paralympics (the Games were held in Munich), the visually impaired were allowed to take part in exhibition events in goalball and the 100-meter sprint. At the same time, amputees entered the stadium to demonstrate their discontent, as the late Christian Paillard, athletics coach for the French federation, recalls: "What do I see coming? Amputees with big banners! They staged a sit-in on the track, saying, "We want to take part in the Games too!"
It was not until four years later, at the Toronto Games in 1976, that amputees and visually impaired athletes were officially allowed to compete. In a bid to raise their profile, each disability category founded its own international federation, and in 1982 an ICC committee was set up to coordinate them and forge closer links with the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
At the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, out-of-competition wheelchair events were included in the program, with the aim of promoting sports for the disabled. This first representation of Paralympic practices at the Olympic Games aroused the anger of amputees, who felt excluded. It also threatened to split the movement.
Despite the crisis situation, the Paralympic Games were maintained in 1984, but split in two: wheelchair athletes competed in New York, and all others in Stoke. In 1986, two international federations joined the movement: one for deaf athletes, the other for athletes with intellectual disabilities.
More than two decades after Tokyo (1964), the Seoul Games (1988) are the first time that the Olympic and Paralympic Games have been held on the same site. Not since 1964.
In 1989, the creation of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) completed the alignment with Olympism and the projection towards a single event organized in partnership with the IOC: the Olympic and Paralympic Games (OG) were henceforth to be held on the same site. This obligation was not finally applied until 1996 in Atlanta, as the 1992 Paralympic Games were held both in Barcelona (for the physically challenged) and Madrid (for the intellectually challenged), while the Olympic Games were held in Barcelona.
A desire to practice like others
The integration movement is not yet complete, however, and remains a source of tension. In 1995, the federation of deaf sportsmen and women decided to withdraw, preferring to see deaf people competing together in their own culture, or, for the most successful, in the Olympic Games. In the end, the deaf never took part in the Paralympic Games.
At the same time, although intellectual disabilities were included in Paralympic events for the first time in 1992, their participation was not without its problems. During the Sydney basketball tournament (2000), it turned out that several players on the Spanish team that had won the tournament were not in fact cognitively impaired. The gold medal was returned, and as the IPC did not know how to ensure reliable selection of this type of athlete, it suspended their participation. It was not until London (2012) that they were reinstated.
The desire to practice "like the others" produces an aggregative force that gradually leads to breaking the link with the medical world. Paradoxically, the aspiration to be the norm forces us to invent adapted events in which each individual can showcase his or her abilities.
Sylvain Ferez, Senior Lecturer (HDR), Sociology, University of Montpellier and Sébastien Ruffie, Professor of Social Sciences, University of the West Indies
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.