I don't like the paralympics.
"The Paralympic Games are sport events for elite athletes with a physical disability or vision impairment. They are designed to emphasize the participants' athletic achievements, not their disability." link
I don't see how they can emphasize the participants' athletic achievements, not their disability, if criterion for attending is disability. There are no mathletics for the stupid. No highjump for the short. No any kinds of sports for the lazy.
But anyway. I like the sports that people can do better than machines. Like sorting stuff. Dexterity contests and such. And problem solving. Celebrating the exceptional human talents. Where all doping and anykind of enhancement is allowed.
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The Paralympics aren't staged for the sake of spectators, they're for the competitors. Imagine you were confined to a wheelchair. People ignore you, it's hard/impossible for you to get dates, you can't compete in sports on any sort of "normal" level, and your employment options are limited. Life would be pretty bleak. The Paralympics would give you a goal, a sense of purpose in life, a sense of inclusion. Every time they held a competition, you'd get to compete against like-minded souls with similar disabilities, you could make friends. It must be wonderfully liberating. No one is suggesting that the Paralympics are going to become a big spectator sport, or that it is mankind's highest achievement.
"People ignore you, it's hard/impossible for you to get dates, you can't compete in sports on any sort of "normal" level, and your employment options are limited. Life would be pretty bleak"
Wouldn't this description fit for obese people as well as people confined to a wheelchair.
And besides paralympics are for very discriminatory. There are many levels of disability. The less serious the disability is, the better the athlete does in the paralympics. The most disabled people don't get the opportunity to compete against like-minded souls with similar disabilities.
So there is a barrier. Above it in clumsyness you have to compete in the regular olympics, and below it you get to compete in the paralympics. There are a lot of clumsy people, without the benefit of cerebral palsy diagnosis, that will not get any sense of purpose in life or an opportunity to make friends. They will be just losers. Paralympics will benefit CP-patients that have the least damage.
It's like being the worlds tallest midget.
And a lot of people talk of paralympics like they should be seen as commercially interesting as olympics. And my original post was about that.
But to stay in the subject, I don't get why we should put any resources to encourage disabled people compete in the things they are disabled to compete in.
I will play boardgames online against people who are ranked as low as I am, so i can have interesting games and win often enough. I don't need the paraboardgames. We can play against the approriate opponent, if we can choose them freely.
So should I feel sorry that someone in a wheelchair will never be able to be a professional basketball player? You know, cause i'm never going to be able to be a professional basketball player, cause i'm too short, and too slow. And there aren't any opportunities for me to play basketball or get dates
Paavo --
The difference with obese people is, they can, theoretically at least, lose the weight. Someone who's paralyzed or missing a limb doesn't have that chance.
From what I understand, the Paralympics have all sorts of disability classes, so people with similar disabilities compete against each other.
I'm never going to play in the Olympics in basketball either, but I don't feel discriminated against, and life has all sorts of other possiblities for me.
To take your position to its extreme, women should have to compete against men. They are the weaker sex, and their swimming and running times are inevitably slower, so they have their own league, so to speak. There are plenty of women athletes who aren't good enough to compete in the Olympics, but they're not really "discriminated" against either. Would you have women compete against men for this reason?
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