Paralympics, promises

The hope and wonder live on in the Paris Paralympic games, but what will their legacy be?

I made it to the Paralympics this weekend, a track and field event at Stade de France. Anyone who follows me on social media knows that my Dutch side comes out in full force at sporting events, and this was no exception. We took first and third place in the men’s long jump. Despite being surrounded by Danes—who won the silver medal—I stood up and cheered like a lunatic when the athletes from the Netherlands were up. Alone.

I didn’t only root for my teams, though. I, along with the rest of the packed stadium, whooped and clapped for all of the athletes. We watched men and women compete in wheelchair racing, long jump, javelin throwing, hammer throwing, shot put, and several running races. Athletes are grouped according to their disability; many of those competing this night were vision-impaired and raced next to a sighted runner who helped guide them.

French President Emmanuel Macron and IOC officials had long promised that the Paris Paralympic Games would be put on equal footing with the games for able-bodied athletes. And, while it may have been less controversial than the first, the opening ceremony last week made good on that promise. It was stunning.

As with last month’s opening ceremony, the extravaganza wasn’t confined to a stadium but used the city of Paris as its backdrop. This one was held in the Place de la Concorde, the sinking sun painting an ever-deepening array of Rothko-esque color blocks in the sky until it settled on inky blue and the light show started. The French excel at a light show.

The ceremony featured artists with and without disabilities performing together. Wheelchairs were turned on their sides and used as props, objects of beauty. I was particularly moved by a performance featuring Musa Motha, a South African dancer who lost a leg to bone cancer when he was young and uses a crutch for support. It was as sublime as any dance performance I’ve seen.

Last month, the delegations of able-bodied athletes arrived on boats on the Seine. These athletes came under their own steam, parading exuberantly down a section of the Champs Elysees on foot, on prosthetics, on crutches, and in wheelchairs. Their progression, sometimes painstaking, was a visual reminder of what they had to endure and overcome just to be here; many of them came from countries where accessibility and acceptance of disability are scant.

The choice of the Place de la Concorde for the ceremony was not a random one. Paris Olympic Committee head Tony Estanguet reminded the audience that this was the site of beheadings during the French Revolution and International Paralympic Committee chief Andrew Parsons said it was time for another revolution, this time a “revolution of inclusion”.

Time, it certainly is.

The afternoon before I attended the track and field competition—athleticism, in French—I met a woman who had come from the US to watch some of the events. She used a wheelchair. I asked her how complicated it had been trying to get around Paris —only a single metro line is fully accessible. She told me she hadn’t even attempted to take public transportation, but had been relying on a specially fitted fleet of cabs.

The games shined a spotlight on the difficulties people with disabilities face living in France. An article I read quoted a man who said just finding an apartment he could access in his wheelchair had been a huge challenge.

Earlier that morning, the France Inter radio station had on an inclusion activist who talked about the problems children with disabilities face in the education system. Sometimes they are excluded because of mobility issues, other times because teachers don’t want to hold things up for the rest of the class. For all its talk of liberty and revolution, France is a profoundly conformist nation, and not enough is done to accommodate people with differences. That’s true on many levels.

It would be easy to dismiss the rosy talk about inclusion and change surrounding the games as so much hot air, but it doesn’t have to be. These games sparked a public conversation about the ways in which France is letting the differently abled fall through the cracks of society, thus raising awareness. Recognizing a problem is the first step on the path to fixing it.

There has been magic in these games; for one thing, they have brought hope and wonder to France, not something the country is known for. I shared a cab home with a friend last night, and as we crossed the Seine we could see the cauldron lit by the Olympic flame hovering in the midnight sky. “Have you been to see it yet?” I asked him. He had, and had had the same experience as I: a collective moment of transcendence and a feeling—not so common here—of unity.

The challenge France will face once the Olympic flame has been extinguished is to make sure that sense of solidarity lives on and that the promises of inclusion that were made at the outset of the games result in concrete and lasting change.