This summer saw one of the most exciting Olympic Games to date. Americans fell in love with Simone Biles as she became the most decorated American gymnast in history, applauded as runners Nikki Hamblin and Abbey D’Agostino stopped to help one another after falling during the 5,000 meter race, and bowed their heads in shame after Ryan Lochte lied to the media and generated an embarrassing scandal. But after the closing ceremonies on August 21, most spectators around the world clicked off their TVs and returned to the mundane routine of life without omnipresent record-breaking competition, abjectly oblivious to the fact that such competition, actually was not over. It lived on, streaming out of Rio for the first two weeks of September as disabled athletes participated in the Paralympic Games.
What began in 1948 as a small tournament for paralyzed British World War II veterans has evolved into a renowned international competition involving 4,300 athletes from over 160 countries. Since its origins, the Paralympics has expanded to accommodate athletes with a wide variety of issues, including paralysis, visual impairment, limb deficiency (amputation), and intellectual disabilities.
In an attempt to ensure fair competition and bridge disparities in the severity of impairment, disabilities are broken into ten classes, pitting athletes with similar disabilities against one another. While each sport cannot offer competition for each class, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) is committed to offering opportunities in the highest number of sports to the highest number of participants. In 2016, athletes took part in 22 sports. Double amputees raced the 5,000 meter; a man without arms took the gold in the 100 meter backstroke. Teams of five completely blind athletes played soccer, and wheelchair-bound contestants fenced fiercely.
The Paralympics received an outrageously low amount of television coverage. In 2016, the Paralympics aired for roughly 66 hours on major channels, compared to the 6,755 hours of coverage given to the Summer Olympics. For those who find mental math tedious, I’ll provide the statistics: the Paralympics drew less than 1 percent of the broadcasting time that the Olympics did. While this is an increase from the four-and-a-half hours the Paralympics got in 2012, so short a duration can hardly do justice to the extraordinary skill and dedication of Paralympic athletes.
All athletes at the Olympic level must overcome incredible odds, endure fastidious training, and show unwavering dedication to their sport. The obstacles of Paralympians, though, simultaneously obvious and unimaginable, make their level of finesse, their physical and mental achievement, that much more inspiring. These are people who have decided to succeed when they were told they could not; people who have pushed the limits of what is possible for them to do and of what is possible for others to believe; these are the people, as one commercial put it, who are the real “superhumans.”
It may be difficult to find sufficient coverage of this remarkable event, but there exists 66 hours of it somewhere on the Internet and TV networks. I recommend looking it up. It still isn’t necessary to return to the banalities of un-Olympic occurrences. Even after the end of the Olympics, athletes of every country and level of physical capability continue to shock, to shine, to soar.