The Tokyo Paralympics, now underway, will be a sporting triumph. Of that I have no doubt. This will represent a huge achievement for a small organisation, strapped for cash, and still uncertain of the identity it wants to forge for itself 33 years after its birth.
I’ve assisted the International Paralympic Committee in overseeing World Para Athletics for the past decade. In that time I’ve seen the IPC change leadership and its culture shift. It is now less autocratic and more democratic; less swashbuckling and more bureaucratic; with fewer sharp elbows and more policies and paperclips.
There is good and bad about this change, which is probably inevitable for any young, developing membership body. Neither its old nor new leaders, however, have resolved existential questions around the purpose of the IPC. Does it exist solely to organise elite sports events of the highest calibre? Or does it have a duty to develop disability sport more widely? And where should the championing of disability rights sit in its list of priorities?
Those within Paralympic sport refer to it as a movement, with all the connotations of a political cause that this terminology evokes. The IPC is refreshingly challenging in the language and imagery that it uses to promote its Games, believing that this has positive ramifications for people living with disability, not just those gifted enough to compete at the Paralympics.
The challenge such campaigning presents in constructing the programme for the Games is enormous. How can you ensure that the Paralympics resonate for people with all forms of disability?
Athletics and swimming comprise the bulk of the medals to be won at each summer Paralympics. But it is impossible to include every event in these two sports for every class of disabled competitor. Swimming tries to handle this by combining different types of disability in races. Athletics, by contrast, keeps disability classes apart and makes agonisingly difficult choices to construct a schedule that gives a range of opportunities for all. Both approaches are far from perfect and incite controversy.
Inevitably, this becomes an exercise in coming up with the least worst outcome, upsetting the fewest people possible. The IPC’s instruction to its competition committees is to provide more opportunities for those with severe physical impairments and to aim for gender parity. As a result, the depth and quality of competition can vary widely across events within a sport, and between different sports in the Games.
“If every event had every class at the Paralympic Games then they would last four years” Hannah Cockroft, T34 wheelchair racer
The sporting elitists within the movement argue that only events with real competitiveness should be included in the Paralympics. But this ignores the reality of funding policies across a swathe of leading sporting nations.
With a finite pot of money, agencies such as UK Sport will always focus on athletes whose sports and events are on the Games programme. They won’t spend money in the hope that an event might one day be deemed strong enough globally to become part of the Paralympics.
Faced with this financial reality, the IPC gambles with the overall perception of the Paralympics by including events that currently have small pools of competitors in the hope that their very inclusion will stimulate future growth.
If the IPC was wealthier, its development of elite disability sport would be far easier. But it is a fraction of the size of the behemoth that is the International Olympic Committee, and very reliant on the goodwill and resources of the host cities for its Games and the IOC in supporting the pairing of Olympics and Paralympics. This is an organisation with an annual budget of under EUR 30 million and far less than that in the bank. By contrast, the IOC has cash of around $2.5 billion.
Partly in response to its limited resources, the IPC’s membership will later this year vote to set free those sports that are currently directly controlled by the organisation, including athletics and swimming (or casting them out - it depends on your perspective). Right now, the search is on for nations, cities and/or organisations willing to provide homes for these sports.
This is a risky move, creating newly independent competitors in the marketplace for scarce sponsorship dollars, as well as in the short term jeopardising the health of the cornerstone sports of the summer Paralympics.
The upshot though is that the IPC will now be able to narrow its focus to the Games themselves, and the leverage opportunity these provide for the global promotion of disability rights. The Paralympics will always mean different things to different people, but their guardian now has the chance to really assert what it believes their meaning should be.
Unfair lottery
UK Sport invested £265 million in the performance plans of Britain’s Olympic sports in the Tokyo cycle. The equivalent Paralympic investment was £71 million.
Team GB comprised 376 athletes at this summer’s Olympics. The current Paralympics GB team contains 227 athletes.
Maybe it does cost less to deliver medal table success at the Paralympics than the Olympics given the thinner level of competition in some Para events - an obvious consequence of the varying prevalence rates of different disabilities.
But, as a nation of lottery players, do we really want the spending behind our Paralympians to be more than 70% lower per head than supports our Olympians? I for one don’t.
And now for something completely different
Recommended viewing from a colleague in Ireland - Limerick obliterating Cork in the first half of last weekend’s All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championships. Limerick eventually ran out clear winners in the highest scoring final in the 134 years of the competition. Click below and enjoy!