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Timeout: Back to the Future
View ForumI have visited toy stores since our daughter Victoria joined the family 11 years ago. Barbie? dolls aren?t her thing anymore, but they are an interesting display of capitalist marketing, so I recently was looking at the latest in innovative designs.
My eye went to Becky??Paralympic champion and Barbie?s friend?attractively displayed in a see-through box. She was seated in a sleek racing wheelchair set against a background of cheering Olympic fans, complete with the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) logo and stamp; this was official licensed merchandise of the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC).
I thought, Wow! Now wheelchair sports is really hitting mainstream America. Wheelchair athletes are finally getting their due. ?
The box?s back gave information about the Paralympic Games. I was surprised to read, ??Paralympic? means ?next to? or ?parallel? to the Olympic Games.? Really!
The box directed readers to the Olympic Web site, www.Olympics.org, which no longer carries information on the Paralympics. Through the search engine Google.com, www.Paralympic.org popped up. I then patched to a subpage giving information on the IPC.
Quoting the Web page: ?What Is the IPC?? It is the ?international representative organization of elite sports for athletes with disabilities. The IPC is formed and run by 160 National Paralympic Committees and five disability-specific international sports federations.? One of the latter is the International Stoke Mandeville Wheelchair Sports Federation (ISMWSF), which represents athletes with spinal-cord injuries (SCIs). ?
This Web page then clarified Paralympic: ?The word ?Paralympic? comes from the Latin word para, meaning ?with,? and the word ?Olympic.? It has nothing to do with paraplegia, which stands for a cervical injury.?(Every paraplegic knows paraplegia refers to people paralyzed in the lower extremities, and quadriplegia/tetraplegia to those with cervical injuries resulting in paralysis of all four extremities.)
The Web site explains that the International Sport Organization for the Disabled (ISOD) was formed in 1964 for people who are blind or have amputations, cerebral palsy, or Les Autres (whom they indicate in error were paraplegics; actually, Les Autres was a catchall group for all other disabilities).
What a revelation! So much for paralyzed wheelchair athletes finally getting the recognition for which they have strived for decades. Actually, they?ve worked for it since 1948, when Sir Ludwig Guttmann opened the first Stoke Mandeville Games in England, the same year as the London Olympic Games.
The Stoke Mandeville Games, for athletes with SCIs, take place annually, except during Olympic years. The first world wheelchair games, the Paralympics, were in Rome in 1960 and featured paralyzed wheelchair athletes. These Paralympics were also held in Tokyo (1964), Israel (1968), and for the last time for people with SCI, in Heidelberg, Germany (1972).
By 1976, wheelchair athletes reached new levels of recognition with the first exhibition wheelchair races, at the Los Angeles Olympic Games. That year, what would have been the Toronto Paralympics was the ?Toronto Olympiad for the Disabled,? perhaps because for the first time the games included nonwheelchair users. In 1980 (Arnhem, Holland), the Olympics for the Disabled included participants with a variety of disabilities.
Four years later the U.S. attempted to host the Paralympics at the University of Illinois, but the USOC refused to allow the organizing committee to use the term ?Paralympics.? This severely depressed fund-raising; ultimately the games were held for the paralyzed in Stoke Mandeville, England, as the VII World Wheelchair Games. The International Games for the Disabled hosted all other disabilities in New York.
In 1988, the 8th Seoul Paralympics took place, evidently using the term with the newly formed IPC?s blessing. This was the first time international games including disabilities other than SCI were called Paralympics.
For the past 13 years, the term has been used for international games for athletes with disabilities. The history of the Paralympics, dating back to 1960, has been conveniently forgotten. It is evidently an embarrassment for the IPC to explain how a term coined to describe international sports competition for people with SCI?the paralyzed?now means competition for all these other athletes. Sir Ludwig must be rolling over in his grave!
For paraplegic wheelchair athletes who know the history of Paralympics, the explanation on official Paralympic Web sites and on the backs of Becky? doll packages must leave a bitter realization that recognition for disabled athletes is being won on the shoulders of paralyzed wheelchair athletes.
Nancy Crase is S?NS editorial consultant. She and her husband Cliff and their daughter Victoria live in Phoenix.
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