by Olympic fans watching the Paralympics for the first time are faced with an unusual sight: Team USA is trailing in the medals table.
While U.S. Olympic athletes have dominated the medal count and airwaves for decades, their Paralympic colleagues have enjoyed far more modest success.
So far in the 21st century, the United States has only failed to top the Olympic medal table once, but its average finish in the Paralympic medal table since 2000 is fourth.
Ukraine, a nation with a population about one-tenth the size of the United States and a GDP less than 1 percent of the United States’, has beaten the U.S. team in two of the last three Paralympics.
However, since finishing sixth in the medal table at the London 2012 Paralympic Games, the United States has seen a steady improvement in its standing, placing fourth at Rio 2016 and third at Tokyo 2021.
By the end of the games Friday, the United States was third in the medals table — behind China and Great Britain — with 31 gold medals and 86 overall.
So can Team USA continue to turn the tables?
The United States once dominated the Paralympics in the same way it dominates the Olympics.
Between 1976 and 1996, Team USA dominated the medal table at every Paralympic Games. The United States holds the all-time record for most Paralympic medals overall and gold, largely due to the country’s dominance during this period.
Julie Dussliere, head of Paralympics at the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC), attributes the relative decline of the American team in the medals table to the global growth of the Paralympic movement, telling CNN Sport: “Team USA remains incredibly strong and well supported – and we are thrilled with the performance so far in Paris.”
It might be tempting to overlook the U.S. team’s ups and downs, because the Paralympics have historically struggled to attract the same viewership as the Olympics. In 2000, the Sydney Olympics were watched by 3.7 billion people, according to the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The Sydney Paralympics, on the other hand, were watched by just 300 million people, 92 percent fewer than the Olympics that year.
The poor media coverage of the Paralympics has been described by former Paralympian and US team captain Kristin Duqette as “a disservice to society”, adding: “The reality is that being disabled is part of the human condition.”
Mary Hums, a professor of sports administration at the University of Louisville who has worked at four Paralympic Games, told CNN Sport that the lack of role models can impact people who get into parasport and eventually become Paralympians. “If you don’t see one, you don’t think you can be one,” she said.
That sentiment is echoed by Dussliere, who said the U.S. success “helps drive participation and competition.”
That lack of visibility can delay the start of training for future elite athletes. Duqette is a five-time American record holder in para-swimming, but she told CNN she didn’t hear about the Paralympics until she was 15.
In some international markets, Paralympic viewers enjoyed broader television coverage than in the United States.
In 2012, Britain’s Channel 4 broadcast more than 400 hours of coverage of the Paralympic Games. In the United States, the cable channel NBC Sports, which holds the copyright, aired only four one-hour highlights clips from the Games. Responding to NBC’s proposed coverage, Philip Craven, then president of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), told the Daily Telegraph: “Some people think North America is still ahead in every way, but that’s not the case. It’s time they caught up.”
Paris Paralympic Games organisers are promising the 2024 Games will be the most-watched in Paralympic history, with all sports broadcast for the first time.
NBC has increased its television coverage of the Games to more than 140 hours across NBC, USA Network and CNBC, as well as a “record number of hours of primetime,” but that primetime coverage still appears to be limited to three highlight specials. NBC said it is making “an unprecedented commitment to the Paralympic Games” and will also air about 1,500 hours of coverage on its Peacock streaming service.
Channel 4 has increased its coverage to 1,300 hours of live coverage on television and free-to-air digital platforms and will broadcast coverage of the Games on its television channel almost continuously from 8am to 11.30pm local time for the duration of the Paralympic Games.
The United States is far from the only country with more limited television coverage of the Paralympics. In some countries, such as India, the Paralympics will not be broadcast live on any television network.
“Potential future athletes have no role models to show them what they are capable of at a time in their lives when most of society is telling them they are incapable of anything useful,” Ian Brittain, an academic at Coventry University and an expert in the study of Paralympic sport, told CNN.
“Sponsors are pulling back on investment because their brand or product won’t get the coverage it needs, no matter how successful the athlete is.
“It also reinforces the idea that the Paralympic Games and therefore Paralympians and/or people with disabilities are less important and less worthy of attention and praise than their non-disabled counterparts, which in turn continues their marginalisation and exclusion from wider society.”
In addition to the low media coverage of the Paralympics, the lack of visibility can also contribute to a general lack of public interest. According to Google Trends data, during the 2016 Games, 60 countries generated more interest in the Paralympics than the United States, including Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Germany.
Another major obstacle to the United States’ Paralympic dominance is the strength and depth of China’s para-athlete team.
The U.S. team is typically one of the largest in the Olympic Village, with the American delegation in Paris sending 20 more athletes than host nation France. Team USA’s Paralympic representation will be smaller, however, with the nation sending only the fourth-largest group to the City of Lights.
China, on the other hand, is sending the largest number of athletes to the Paris Paralympics – 282 to the United States’ 220. The Asian nation’s investment in sports infrastructure is also a boon; Chinese Paralympians can train at the world’s largest training centre for elite athletes with disabilities, as well as 30 other regional training centres.
“Unless a country is willing to replicate this type of industrial breeding of para athletes and invest resources to that degree and beyond – or China decides it no longer wants to do it – China will continue to dominate for many decades to come,” Brittain told CNN.
Indeed, the Asian nation leads the medals table in Paris at the end of the games on Friday by a wide margin, with 83 gold medals – almost equal to the United States’ total – and 188 overall.
It is hoped that hosting the Paralympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028 will be an opportunity to fundamentally change attitudes towards para-sport and disability in general in the United States.
“Los Angeles has a history of transformational Games and this is undoubtedly a huge opportunity to grow Paralympic sport and reimagine how the Los Angeles and United States community engages,” Dussliere told CNN.
“Combined with the hosting of the Games in Salt Lake City in 2034, this decade of sport has the potential to have an extraordinary impact on Paralympic sport in the United States.”
Hums said China’s improvement in the medal standings during the 1990s and 2000s was “consistent with a country that will host the next Games (in 2008).”
“Sport has the power to inform, empower and transform,” she said. “Hosting the Olympics can shine a light on an underlying problem that can then be addressed.”
Duquette said hosting the Games would provide an opportunity to show an “organic representation of disability and disability sports,” which she said “will break down many barriers.”
According to a 2014 UK government report, almost 70% of the British public believe that attitudes towards disabled people have improved since London hosted the 2012 Paralympic Games.
But hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games is not a miracle solution.
Even the most ardent supporters of the Games have acknowledged the difficulty of a single event having an impact on society. “It’s hard to expect the Games to deliver all the social change that disabled people need to live a fair life in the UK,” said British Paralympic gold medallist Tanni Grey-Thompson.
In 2024, 12 years after the UK hosted the Paralympics, the UK government was criticised by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) for failing to address “grave and systematic violations of the human rights of persons with disabilities”.
Brittain told CNN that change must start with government and extend to everyone else in society. It’s also a long-term process, not something that will happen in two weeks in 2028.
He added: “Plans and resources designed in collaboration with people with disabilities must be implemented now, regularly monitored and evaluated, and also resourced for the next 25 to 30 years.”
While it is unlikely that Team USA will lead the medal table in Paris, is it likely that the United States will improve even further and retake the top spot in Los Angeles? It is hard to see the United States dominating like it did in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, but there is hope. As Duquette said, “The United States has come a long way, and we still have a long way to go.”
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