LET THE GAMES LIGHT UP THE WORLD
50 years after it began, 7,500 athletes from 190 countries are gathered here in the UAE for 1 very special event ...
Thousands of athletes from around the world will take centre stage tonight as what organisers promise to be “the best World Games in the history of the Special Olympics movement” begin in Abu Dhabi.
An opening ceremony, at Zayed Sports City Stadium, will mark the official start of the first Special Olympics World Games held in the Middle East. It is hoped that the eight-day event will help transform attitudes towards people with intellectual disabilities in the region, with about 7,500 athletes from more than 190 nations and territories competing.
The Flame of Hope torch, which has been making its way across the Emirates since March 4 in a relay, will complete its long journey and be used to light a symbolic cauldron in front of tens of thousands of spectators.
A spectacular light show and fireworks display is also expected and the athletes will take part in a parade, just over 50 years after the first Special Olympics was held in Chicago in 1968. Tributes will be paid to Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the sister of John F Kennedy, who founded the Games and died in 2009.
Canadian pop star Avril Lavigne and Hussain Al Jassmi, an Emirati singer, are among the famous artists who will perform the Games’ anthem, Right Where I Am Supposed To Be.
The ceremony was designed in collaboration with people with learning difficulties, who will recite their own poetry and lead dance performances during the show, which is expected to last more than two hours.
“It’s a great pleasure for us to be here in the Middle East for the first World Games that have been held in this part of the world,” Mary Davis, the Special Olympics chief executive, said yesterday.
“I have never seen anything like the preparation that has been put in over the past couple of years into ensuring these games will be the best World Games in the history of the Special Olympics movement.”
For the first time in the history of the Games, which have previously been held in the US, Ireland, China and Greece, a dedicated team has been set up to ensure the event has a lasting legacy in the Middle East and beyond.
The Games will improve the lives of people of determination for generations to come, by inspiring a wide-ranging overhaul of legislation and a string of initiatives, said Hessa Buhumaid, Minister of Community Development.
are participating in the World Games – with more than six million athletes, 80 per cent of them, living outside the United States.
Special Olympics was begun by a woman, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who was determined not to let obstacles of any variety hinder the movement towards dignity and equality.
We grew through the determination of untold millions of athletes – girls and boys, women and men – who claimed dignity and equality for themselves. They did this by training, practising and competing. Their life-changing act was not to fight, but to run, swim, skate, kick, lift, throw, jump and tumble – always with courage, and to the best of their ability.
In Abu Dhabi this week and next, more than 7,500 athletes will compete, brave women and men. We will all see where determination has taken them.
We will see Chaica Al Qassimi, an Emirati and student of martial arts who is a torchbearer and judo referee at these Games.
We will see Mariam Adel Azzab, who joined Special Olympics Egypt in 2001, when she was 15, and has competed in athletics, table tennis and equestrian events. She’s also an entrepreneur, owning her own cake business.
We will see Samiah Siddiq, who has competed in bowling, hockey and swimming, and who will represent Saudi Arabia in women’s basketball.
We will see Daimi Aza, of Puerto Rico, a rhythmic gymnast who trained in the aftermath of a devastating hurricane that struck her home island.
And we will see and hear from Loretta Claiborne, of the United States, who will be the keynote speaker at a majlis at which she will tell her story of overcoming severe physical disabilities and discrimination through the power of running.
Besides being our chief inspiration officer and member of the international board of directors, Loretta is a veteran marathon runner and martial arts expert and has been an inspirational leader to countless younger athletes. World Games stories like these are stories of success. The joy that will be generated here in the UAE is a mark of progress.
But the paradox of progress is that each step forward reveals just how much further we must go. Exclusion is still real for millions of people with intellectual disabilities around the world, in every aspect of their lives – not only in sports, but also in education, health and the workplace.
That is why we are celebrating our 50th anniversary by challenging people across the globe to join an all-out effort to end discrimination against people with intellectual disabilities. We know that our 50-year race, our 50-year movement, is in some ways only a beginning.
Our athletes are determined to lead us there. Ask them how, and this is what they will say: Our goal is a world where inclusion is the rule, not the exception. Where all sports are unified sports. Where all schools are unified schools, and all health is inclusive health. Where the arts as much as the workplace is inclusive. A world where intellectual disabilities, gender, race, colour and faith are incidental markers that do not obscure the humanity we all share.
If you fail to understand or accept inclusion, we will include you anyway, and insist that you include us. If you show us hatred with words of cruelty and ridicule, we will give you better words, like Respect. Instead of “persons with disabilities”, we will share a new term, now used in the UAE: “people of determination”.
If equality will not go to us, we will go towards equality.
Come with us. We will race you there.
If you fail to understand or accept inclusion, we will include you anyway, and insist that you include us