RIO A PARTY FOR ALL
Paralympics about hope, inclusion
The hope is that the Paralympics don’t just come and go in a joyous bubble; that they leave something behind; that visiting media and fans take something home, too.
Like a tilt toward inclusion, an enlightened level of acceptance, something more than a sunburn.
That’s a lot to ask of a world that hardly knows the Paralympics, so besotted are we with the bigger show. And it is even more presumptuous because there is no such hope the Olympics will engender an altered state of consciousness. Those Games entertain and inspire in their moment, but the best hope for a legacy is a plethora of well-used sports facilities and a broader base of athletes, the worst fear that each new set of those grandiose buildings becomes a herd of white elephants and host countries regret the experience.
And yet, Team Canada’s chef de mission Chantal Petitclerc sees new reason — delivered unabashedly by two young Brazilian boys who wanted to race her and one-time wheelchair sprint rival Louise Sauvage at the Olympic Stadium track on Saturday — to believe the Paralympics can deliver on that ambitious ask.
“So they go beside me, they kneel, and they want to race me like they just saw on the track,” said Petitclerc. “So I raced with them . ... And I think, this is pretty amazing. They don’t care about my disability. They don’t care about my accident. They just want to know if they can be faster than me.”
The crowds were young here, and if generations of Brazilians grow up seeing Paralympians as peers, the movement scores a victory. But there were more than 160 countries at these Games, and exporting local or even national success here is a massive chore.
All national sport bodies, like the Canadian Paralympic Committee, have to hope there was also an impact at home; that increasing media exposure begets momentum for their movement. But they still have to spend the bulk of each quadrennial developing and funding programs and athletes who can win medals. Because medal winners step up during competition and then onto the podium. They can reach those kids better from that vantage point.
Canada won 29 medals here and finished 13th overall, inside the CPC’s goal of top 16. It was a modest success. Four of those medals were won by swimmer Aurélie Rivard, who was chosen to carry the flag at the closing ceremonies on Sunday night. The honour is a reward for stellar performance and a signal from the CPC.
“I think it’s a great recognition of the amazing work that Swimming Canada has been doing on the Olympic and Paralympic programs,” said Petitclerc. “It’s not only about one individual being successful as she was, and she was . ... She also represents what we are trying to say here. This team is rebuilding.”
Team Canada won medals in only seven of the 19 sports their athletes contested: athletics, swimming, road and track cycling, sailing, rowing and triathlon. There were disappointments in wheelchair basketball and rugby, where medal hopes were high. But there were topfive and top-eight performances in other sports, too, and a post-Games technical analysis will consider those achievements and recommend perhaps increased funding levels for those sports and their athletes in the belief they will be on the podium at the next two summer Paralympics.
So the take-away for Canada is generally positive.
So too the atmosphere here, though it was dealt a tragic blow following the death of Iranian cyclist Bahman Golbarnezhad, who sustained neck injuries during a crash on Saturday, then suffered cardiac arrest. He died in a Rio hospital. It was the first ever in-Games death of a Paralympian, and organizers, athletes and officials were profoundly affected.
For two weeks Rio treated its Paralympians very well, in part because Brazilians will always take you as you are. You want to jog along Barra beach with nothing but a Speedo underneath that big beer belly? Go right ahead sir. You want to pick dental floss from between those rather significant glutes on that beach blanket, young lady? By all means.
In turn, and because it’s what they do at Games like these, the Paralympians exceeded expectations and treated Rio to a variety show. The home team produced 71 medals and incredibly emotional moments at the pool and the track, where the biggest crowds congregated. Swimmer Daniel Dias won nine, and basked in the love.
“They were the best days of my life,” he said.
They were good days for the movement, too, particularly given the fact these Paralympics started under a pall of budget cuts, poor ticket sales and venue closures. By Sunday, more than two million tickets had been sold. Rio’s citizens, the Cariocas, got behind the Games founded almost six decades ago by German Ludwig Guttmann.
“Thanks to God, many years ago there was a great man who changed the lives of millions of handicapped people and gave them a chance of rehabilitation, giving us this chance so that people stopped blocking us and trying to hide us,” said Ukrainian athletics medallist Liudmyla Danylina. “Now the whole world can see us and cheer for us.”
That’s the hope.