Sports occupy an ambiguous place in the social landscape. They provide pleasure to tens of millions of Americans and can help people get and stay healthy. At their finest, they create instances of beauty that are a form of physical art. On the other hand, sports have also provided a setting for greed, exploitation, prejudice, and corruption.
But one unambiguously positive trend has been that more and more people have been able to experience the positive dimensions of sports. One important moment occurred in 1968 in Chicago, when 1,000 young people from 26 states competed in three sports (track, floor hockey, and swimming) in the first Special Olympics. Now there are 4.5 million participants, from 180 countries.1
The idea behind the Special Olympics was to improve the general fitness and social skills of intellectually disabled children. And that is still largely the point; communities and parents put on 80,000 local events a year. In addition, the Special Olympics World Games are held every two years, alternating between summer and winter. There are 32 sports (25 summer,2 7 winter), and participants compete against others of similar ability. In 2015 in Los Angeles, 6,500 people competed at the most recent Summer Games; the Opening Ceremonies were held in the Coliseum, and ESPN was on hand.
These medals come from several such events. Christopher Byrne of New Jersey,3 who has been competing in the Special Olympics since the first meet in 1968, won a gold in ice skating at the 1989 Winter Games in Reno (left); a bronze in track-and-field at the 1991 Summer Games in Minneapolis (middle); and another skating gold at the 1993 Winter Games in Salzburg, Austria (right).
The Special Olympics were the inspiration of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, younger sister not only of John F. Kennedy but also of Rosemary Kennedy, who was intellectually disabled. Not everyone considered the event a good idea. Skeptics were concerned that the children (and at first the Special Olympics were for children only) would become frustrated by defeat or downhearted by the difficulty of learning a sport. While not every participant has loved the experience, the overwhelming lesson of the Special Olympics is that bringing sports to more people is a good thing, helping to build confidence and improve health. Besides, the games are fun.
The Paralympics are another example of how people who were once shut out of sports have found ways to get into them. In the United States, disabled World War II veterans took to the idea of wheelchair basketball.4 By 19495 there were wheelchair basketball tourneys, and in 1957 the first National Wheelchair Games took place, offering track, darts, Ping-Pong, and archery, as well as hoops.6
Three years later, Rome held the first Paralympics. It wasn’t big—400 men7 from 23 countries in eight sports8—and it was exclusively for wheelchair athletes, but it was a start. The Winter Paralympics began in 1976.9 Over time the Paralympics have broadened in scope, and the rules have been standardized. There are 10 disability categories; in addition, athletes are assessed on their degree of impairment to make the competition as comparable as possible. The standard of performance has risen markedly. The best Paralympians are world-class athletes; check out the ripped upper bodies of top wheelchair marathoners, who can finish a 26.2-mile course in less than 90 minutes.
In ironic proof of how the Paralympics have come of age, they even attract scandal and controversy on a regular basis, just like every other kind of sport. There have been flunked drug tests,10 classification disputes,11 sex scandals,12 and arguments over money and technology. South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius was the photogenic face of the Paralympics in 2012, when he became the first amputee runner to also compete in the conventional Games. Three years later, he was convicted of killing his girlfriend.13
On the whole, though, the story has to be seen as one of genuine progress, with more physically disabled people participating in sports, and more nondisabled people appreciating their skills. More than 4,300 athletes (1,523 of them women) from 164 countries participated in the London Paralympics in 2012.14