I keep my sporting medals behind my desk to remind me of a former life. You can see them in my Zoom background if you peer long or hard enough. They are not all that important on the scale of things, but they allow me to tell stories when there’s a lull in conversation or if I’m feeling particularly full of myself that day.
I grew up playing wheelchair basketball and wheelchair rugby. When people would ask me what I was going to be doing over the weekend I would say, “Hitting other cripples for fun.” I was a real hit at university parties with that one. I was lucky to get to represent Canada a couple of times at some exhibitions. Never anything important, but always just enough to make early twenty-something me feel important. At the very least, I was adjacent to people who the sporting world knew. My first basketball wheelchair was bought from Colette Bourgonje, one of Canada’s most illustrious Paralympians. Now, she has a school named after her. I once tagged along to see what being a disabled teacher was all about. Funny how things change.
I share this because, as we begin this year’s winter Paralympics, it’s good to remember that the games themselves, and para-sport in general, are not accessible to everyone. There is a tangible reason why I, a white middle-class kid in the middle of the Canadian prairies who is an immigrant in name only, am able to (peripherally) be part of a national team program. My parents could drive me to practice, they could let me dabble in various sports (no I will not show you how bad I was at cross country skiing), they could fly me to the University of Illinois for basketball camp, they could buy me the wheelchair. They could conceive of a future – albeit unlikely – where "athlete" was a career path. That didn’t come to pass, but it’s still a core part of my identity. We didn’t have to worry about poverty, I wasn’t multiply marginalized. I had this one clear diagnosis, I knew my role, I knew – from the first moment on the basketball court until near the end of my career – that I belonged with this merry mix of misfits.
It’s a testament to my privilege that I can write this piece, that I can center my own voice, and not fear misrepresentation. I put the "former" in former athlete, but I still get to cash in on that experience. It still goes into my bio for speaking engagements, it is still a part of me that I’m grappling with.
Daphne Wester wrote an informative piece a couple of weeks ago about the adaptations made in Beijing for this year’s events. When you watch the games, I would ask that you think about how those athletes that you cheer on in the haze of national pride sporting awe are still largely coming back to an inaccessible world. Their careers and accomplishments may occasionally give them an advantage in the business world – a shiny item on their resume or a very professionally produced headshot – but those Paralympians are still hearing “we don’t hire people like you here” whether implicitly or explicitly. Even with the most visible among the disability community, there is still a fundamental barrier to accessibility. These are athletes who are called heroes, inspirations, national treasures, and some can’t make it past the first interview stage.
This is normally where we’d look for a resolution to the story, a sound bite, a feel-good nugget to swallow and move on with our day. Instead, I’ll point you to this piece by US Paralympian Brian Bell. It can be very easy to see Paralympians as transcending the discrimination they face, but it’s far more complicated. Disability and sport, even at the most elite level, can only magnify these divisions if we’re not careful.
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