Paralympic Games are gonna be held in Rio next month. From September 7th to September 18th. This is an article I wrote back in 2012 but I had never uploaded to my own blog, so here I go.
I’ve had the occasion to watch the broadcasting of the Paralympics 2012
games that ended in London last September 9th and I'm still wondering
how it is possible that these games are held after the Olympics.
Last night I watched the 200-meter crawl series. Swimmers walked in front of camera as they were named through the PA system. They took their seats and began to undress. All of them had some physical decline, but I got amazed by a Chinese swimmer who was missing an arm. "He's going to lose, -I said to myself- 200 meters crawl with just one arm?. No way”.
He took silver medal. Awesome!
I was zapping TV the day before yesterday when a France-Brazil blind football match was on. Players wore some sort of mask that completely covered their eyes in order to equal players’ perception of different levels of light. Despite they were able to dribble and to feint, to finish on goal and to pass the ball between them.
Brazil was winning 1-0 when adverts forced me to switch TV channel. Astonishing!
I was still enjoying my holidays in the South of Gran Canaria on September 4th, when I read in the newspaper that Spanish Paralympic archer Guillermo Rodriguez, had took the fourth place winning no medal. My compatriot was in the Navy when he suffered an accident that nearly made him lose his legs and now "an iron runs the femur from the hip to the knee and an ankle sock keep the leg sticked togheter with his foot, unable to move by himself". Asked by his opinion regarding US archer Matt Stutzmann he said, "is a genious. It's amazing what he does, the technical quality that he shows, his strength in the feet and back for balance and attention on the target ". The Yankee archer has no arms, but there is a silver medal hung in his neck.
At this point I began to wonder how was possible for a armless person to feel the need to learn how to shoot a bow. How could anyone think about of becoming defense of a football team, being blind?. What goes through a person’s brain who also miss an arm, to decide for swimming practise?.
I’m afraid that all lies in the unshakable faith in self-improvement, in a huge tenacity pursued "ad infinitum" by these men and women, impossible to intimidate by discouragement. Paralympic Athletes, far beyond their specific nationalities, are, IMHO, an example for the rest of us. Their showing confidence in themselves and in their abilities, their perseverance in the effort, despite the enormous difficulties faced in advance, their zeal of improvment pushed to the limit, are all characteristics of human beings, but, I’m confidence not everyone would be able to do it under equal circumstances.
Baron Pierre de Coubertin, father of the modern Games said that "the most important of sports is not to win but to take part in it, because the essential thing in life is not to success, but to strive to get it", and is this second part of the quote which makes me think that the Paralympics should be held in first place because, if the "essential in life is not success, but strive to get it," I have no doubt that the sacrifice and the effort, the commitment and the courage, the bravery and the hard work done by every single Paralimpic Athlete in order to take part in the Games, is infinitely greater than the one made by Ussain Bolt or Michael Phelps, -to name two of the "greatest”- every day of the year, training hard to compete, to be the best.
I think it is Justice
Last night I watched the 200-meter crawl series. Swimmers walked in front of camera as they were named through the PA system. They took their seats and began to undress. All of them had some physical decline, but I got amazed by a Chinese swimmer who was missing an arm. "He's going to lose, -I said to myself- 200 meters crawl with just one arm?. No way”.
He took silver medal. Awesome!
I was zapping TV the day before yesterday when a France-Brazil blind football match was on. Players wore some sort of mask that completely covered their eyes in order to equal players’ perception of different levels of light. Despite they were able to dribble and to feint, to finish on goal and to pass the ball between them.
Brazil was winning 1-0 when adverts forced me to switch TV channel. Astonishing!
I was still enjoying my holidays in the South of Gran Canaria on September 4th, when I read in the newspaper that Spanish Paralympic archer Guillermo Rodriguez, had took the fourth place winning no medal. My compatriot was in the Navy when he suffered an accident that nearly made him lose his legs and now "an iron runs the femur from the hip to the knee and an ankle sock keep the leg sticked togheter with his foot, unable to move by himself". Asked by his opinion regarding US archer Matt Stutzmann he said, "is a genious. It's amazing what he does, the technical quality that he shows, his strength in the feet and back for balance and attention on the target ". The Yankee archer has no arms, but there is a silver medal hung in his neck.
At this point I began to wonder how was possible for a armless person to feel the need to learn how to shoot a bow. How could anyone think about of becoming defense of a football team, being blind?. What goes through a person’s brain who also miss an arm, to decide for swimming practise?.
I’m afraid that all lies in the unshakable faith in self-improvement, in a huge tenacity pursued "ad infinitum" by these men and women, impossible to intimidate by discouragement. Paralympic Athletes, far beyond their specific nationalities, are, IMHO, an example for the rest of us. Their showing confidence in themselves and in their abilities, their perseverance in the effort, despite the enormous difficulties faced in advance, their zeal of improvment pushed to the limit, are all characteristics of human beings, but, I’m confidence not everyone would be able to do it under equal circumstances.
Baron Pierre de Coubertin, father of the modern Games said that "the most important of sports is not to win but to take part in it, because the essential thing in life is not to success, but to strive to get it", and is this second part of the quote which makes me think that the Paralympics should be held in first place because, if the "essential in life is not success, but strive to get it," I have no doubt that the sacrifice and the effort, the commitment and the courage, the bravery and the hard work done by every single Paralimpic Athlete in order to take part in the Games, is infinitely greater than the one made by Ussain Bolt or Michael Phelps, -to name two of the "greatest”- every day of the year, training hard to compete, to be the best.
I think it is Justice
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