The narrative surrounding Paralympic athletes has long been dominated by the idea of overcoming adversity and being inspirational — a notion that many within the disability community, including athletes themselves, are now challenging.
This article, written by student journalist Harry Smith, delves into the evolving conversation around the portrayal of disabled athletes, highlighting the tension between being seen as “inspirational” and the desire for a more nuanced representation. As the 2024 Paralympic Games unfold, this debate is more relevant than ever, raising critical questions about how we view disability, achievement, and the true meaning of success in sports.
The debate on inspiration
“I’m not your inspiration, thank you…” These are the words of Australian disability rights activist Stella Young. Ten years later, this idea gained widespread traction amongst disability groups, chiefly Paralympians, who began to fight against the supercrip narrative. That is the idea that disabled athletes have overcome a disadvantage against the odds. Despite this, many athletes agree with Stella Young and believe it’s time for a change.
Double Paralympic gold medallist and fellow Australian, Madison de Rozario said in an interview with The Guardian: “We can’t view disability as a positive or a negative …It’s neither good nor bad, it just is.”
The causes for this more neutral stance have been around in some form since the Paralympics were in the public consciousness. As far back as 2012, Neil Coyle from the Disability Rights Group said: “People may get the impression that disabled people don’t need support if they can do all these great things.”
For every naysayer, some believe wholeheartedly in the power of the inspirational story. Elizabeth Wright, silver medallist swimmer wrote in The Guardian: “Paralympians like me are inspirational, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Elizabeth, like many athletes, suggests that as long as the focus is on the sport, some negative stereotypes are acceptable. The Paralympics is one of the few events where disability is in the majority, and this in itself is inspiring.
If the goal is to inspire other disabled people, there is unequivocal proof in the form of Ellie Simmonds who directly attributes watching the 2012 Paralympic Games to her considering sport as a career. Eight Paralympic medals later, she certainly has done that!
It seems that even the Paralympians themselves cannot agree. With the 2024 Paralympic Games now underway, it seems unlikely that the coverage will change in tone.
One poll of disabled people’s responses to media coverage suggested that they acknowledge the deleterious effects being presented as superhuman or as caught in a permanent struggle had on their mental health. However, the majority of respondents were in favour of such coverage continuing if it was found to have a positive effect on able-bodied people’s attitude to disability generally.
This attitude seems to promote the idea that the Paralympics can be a starting point for a greater understanding of disabled lives more generally. With this in mind, should athletes like Rosario set aside their own misgivings and embrace the idea that all publicity is good publicity?
Disability representation in the media
In recent years we have grown increasingly used to seeing disabled people in our public life, a lot of which are former athletes, and certainly some undeniable progress has been made.
Eleven years separate the Cerrie Burnell scandal and Lauren Steadman’s appearance on Strictly Come Dancing, where she reached the semi-final. Two years later, Lauren Steadman won Channel 4’s SAS Who Dares Wins, competing against several able-bodied athletes.
This shows how far the public attitude towards disability has come. It is not insignificant that both of these successful media appearances were carried out by an already celebrated para-athlete.
The issue with the representation of para-sports people in the media has largely to do with the length of time they are exposed to the public spotlight. This relatively short period promotes awareness but not understanding.
The way forward for representation, suggested in a study called The Impact of the Media’s Portrayal of Physical Disabilities, lies in the congruity of disabled people’s appearances in the public eye. This is the suggestion that people understand disabled people only when they can be placed in existing social contexts where the public can empathise with their difficulties on a more human level, and in the case of sports, people understand the Paralympians are elite athletes because of their dedication and sportsmanship rather than some manufactured sense of determination or bravery, but the able-bodied only experience in crisis or fear.
This kind of paradigm shift is only possible, if athletes can be placed in the context where they have some agency in the way they are being presented.
Changing the disability and inspirational narrative
Certainly, further progress has been made in this direction in the most recent Paralympic cycle. Channel 4, ever the advocate for parasport, seems to have taken on board the arguments made by athletes like Rosario. Their advert for the 2024 Games is the polar opposite of the one broadcast proceeding Tokyo 2020, making direct reference to the achievements of athletes always being prefaced with qualifiers like, “That is amazing for someone like them”.
This time round they acknowledge that this attitude diminishes the achievements of the athlete. This stands in stark contrast to 2020’ advert, which was entitled “Superhuman”. It couldn’t be a more on-the-nose example of the issues raised above.
The author of Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell, popularised the idea that to master a skill one needed to commit 10,000 hours of practice to it. Subsequent research has suggested that while Malcolm Gladwell’s ideas have some merit, he fails to consider crucial ideas like the quality of one’s teacher and the ability of the performer to capitalise on increasingly diminishing returns as they improve.
This means that for any athlete to be successful, they must by turn be competitive enough to successfully outperform their competition whilst also having the self-awareness to set aside ego and personal expectations to take on the advice and guidance of their coaches. Their talent, superhuman or otherwise, may be an element, but to suggest that it is the whole can be construed as simplistic. Where there is a relationship between their disability and their performance, it is in their creativity.
Jessica Smith, a former Par Australian Para-swimmer and disability advocate, put it best in this TEDx Talk: “I’ve learnt how to adapt. I found my own way of doing things. That’s the thing about people with disabilities… We are some of the most resourceful, creative minds because we have to fit into society. No amount of positive thinking will make my arm grow back.”
On the other side of the world, Louise Fiddes, the S14 ParalympicsGB swimmer, recently stated: “I really struggled at school… so I worked really hard. So then everything I did, I worked really hard at. It’s definitely a weird advantage.”
She continued: “I was kind of used to having that sort of feedback loop of ‘Not quite right. Try again.’”
The inspirational narrative contains an unspoken qualifier for anything the athlete achieves. Dan Powell, a visually impaired judo athlete and rowing world record holder, told us: “I absolutely despise the word considering I’m just a good athlete.”
Stella Young’s parents turned down a community award on her behalf when she was 15, saying “See the thing is she hasn’t actually done anything”.
A similar attitude seems to have been created around Paralympic achievement. Tanni Grey-Thompson, life peer disability campaigner and 11-time Paralympic gold medallist, told Ability Today: “I think it’s also about managing expectations. There is a point where you sell a dream of a gold medal, and that brings children into sport. But telling any disabled child who vaguely does sport, ‘you could be a Paralympian’ is not particularly fair. The reality is, however successful you are, at some point, everybody is not good enough anymore.“
She went on to say she regularly receives messages from parents and PE teachers who want to know the best way to get disabled children who are interested in sport into the Paralympics. Who’s to say if one of those children could be the next Tanni Grey-Thompson perhaps they could, but simply being disabled and participating is not enough.
This is a somewhat banal statement unlikely to need pointing out in reality. Not so, according to boccia gold medallist David Smith one of the athletes behind the recent I am not participating campaign, they corrected several media publications that described him as a Paralympic participant in their coverage.
Regardless of how it is presented with 4,400 athletes from 168 countries competing at the Paralympic Games promises to be tightly contested and entertaining whether it has a lasting impact on how disabled athletes are perceived, as so many have suggested after previous Paralympic Games remains to be seen.