The Paralympic games represent a need for social change
By: Anha Jung
Elena Congost had just finished her race, 26.2 miles of determination behind her. Congost’s hard work had led to the shiny bronze medal put around her neck, and the pride of being third best in the world out of all visually impaired athletes. Yet moments later, the medal was ripped off her neck, stripping away thousands of hours, tears, sweat, and work. The world watched in fear and confusion; why had this hard-working athlete been robbed of her accomplishment? The answer was simple, yet hidden, the fault of this injustice was not Congost herself, but the hundreds of cheaters who came before her.
Originally known as the Stoke Mandeville Games, the Paralympic Games began in the 1960s and were invented to empower, celebrate, and recognize athletes with disabilities. Yet, over the past few decades, the consequences of cheating have led to manipulative games of deceit and taking advantage of athletes with disabilities. The competitive greed within sports has destroyed the purpose of the Paralympic Games, portraying an urgent need for change in sports culture.
The Paralympics are based on a classification system, separating each athlete into a category of disability least impacting to the most impacting on athletic performance. These classifications were implemented to make the games “fairer,” yet in reality, they have done the opposite. Laura Goodkind, a Paralympic rower, stated,“it became clear to me the bigger competition is during classification, not on the playing field.” With more and more athletes cheating to be put against other athletes in a higher classification, who less severe disabilities, the reality of the classification process has become more apparent; athletes are manipulating the holes in the system to gain a better chance of winning, taking advantage of not only the system, but the other athletes within it, defeating the pure purpose of the games.
Additionally, although cheating exists in all sports, cheating within the Paralympics has become a full-scale crisis. The simple truth of the matter is that when it comes to the Paralympics, cheating not only creates an unfair playing field, it ruins the core of the games. An example of this was in the Sydney, 2000 Paralympic games, where one of the biggest cheating scandals of sports history took place. A basketball team, classified in the category of athletes with intellectual disabilities, took gold with ease. The team had represented the power of disabled athletes, or had they? Turns out only 2 out of the 12 people on the team actually had intellectual disabilities, and even more shocking, the players with intellectual disabilities had no idea that their fellow teammates were not disabled. This scandal shook the world, leading to a ban on all athletes with intellectual disabilities at the following 2004 and 2008 games– ruining the careers of thousands of athletes. The act of cheating not only took away the opportunity of hard-working athletes, it instilled a negative reputation on athletes with disabilities and on the Paralympic games as a whole.
The rules within the Paralympic Games have also tightened due to the countless acts of cheating that have taken place. The strict regulations were enforced to catch dishonest athletes, however, it has done the opposite. The simple truth is that when rules are presented publicly, athletes who intend to cheat are able to clearly see the regulations and find ways to surpass them. Additionally, these rules primarily catch athletes who make human mistakes, as the rules enforce regulations on the game that are not broken by purposeful cheating, but by random error. As a result, many diligent, rule-following athletes have their hard-earned medals stripped from them, (an example, Elena Congost, stated above). Additionally, the challenge that follows the rules of the Paralympic Games is that there is a sense of fear within the regulation system. Falsely accusing an athlete of cheating or not being disabled can be insulting to the disabled community as a whole, resulting in the committee being claimed to be “underestimating disabled athletes”.
The fact is that the cheating happening in these games directly represents a core issue in our society, competitive greed. The purpose of the Paralympics is to empower, embrace, and celebrate strong athletes who have already faced adversity created by society. Choosing to cheat, take away the opportunity, and rob so many individuals who have worked so hard, is intrinsic to the harmful message of competition in our society. The devastating consequences of cheating in the Paralympics are a wake-up call, warning society of the dangers of competition, and urging a new culture of sportsmanship to arise.
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