The medals of Léa Ferney and Lucas Créange in table tennis change the game by 2024? Eclipsed by the Paralympic Games between 2000 and 2012, disabled athletes cognitive skills can only compete in three sports in Tokyo, none in Beijing at the Winter Games in five months.
For athletes with mental disabilities, the next planetary meeting is in France: not Paris-2024 but Vichy-2023, the next edition of the Global Games, a competition created following the exclusion of cognitive disabilities from the Games. Paralympics after 2000.
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Criticizing the fallibility of its evaluations to the International Federation of Adapted Sport (the counterpart of disabled sports for cognitive disabilities), the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) had closed the door to its athletes, already integrated late into the Games, in 1996 in Atlanta.
120 participants out of 4,400
It was not until 2012 and London that adapted sport made its Paralympic return, in the same three disciplines as today: athletics, swimming and table tennis. In Tokyo, 21 titles are awarded to athletes with mental disabilities, out of the 539 in play. And they are only about 120 out of nearly 4,400 participants.
Number of medal-awarding events increased by 50%, from 14 to 21
, defends the CIP via a spokesperson at AFP. No other group of people with disabilities have benefited from such an increase in the number of Paralympic Games medals during this period. “
The trend should continue in Paris where if the sports program is stopped
, repeats Tony Estanguet, within it, the International Paralympic Committee still has the possibility of changing the classifications
.
We are still reviewing the Paris program, confirms the CIP. Swimming and table tennis demanded additional hardship for athletes with intellectual disabilities.
A final decision must be ratified by its board of directors by the end of the year.
Regarding table tennis, the choice would be towards the creation of a team event, which would make it possible to increase the number of events without increasing the number of athletes. Because the crux of the problem lies in the limit of participants fixed by an agreement between the CIO and the CIP.
This small number represents the main difficulty, given that creating a new category requires deleting another.
, summarizes to AFP Marc Truffaut, president of Virtus, the International Federation of athletes with an intellectual disability.
“Only the most autonomous participate”
More than opening up to other sports, the priority for him is to create a class with an overhandicap
. Indeed, today there is only one category per event dedicated to athletes with cognitive impairment. This only allows the most autonomous to participate
, he judges. And in fact, prevents people with Down’s syndrome from competing.
Our dream is that they can be present in 2024 at least as part of a demonstration (an event without attribution of medals, Editor’s note)
, asks Marc Truffaut, specifying that discussions in this direction are engaged with the CIP. That they take the start, be visible, that would change the representations.
Sport can change the gaze, it is one of the simplest levers
, underlines to AFP the Secretary of State in charge of disabled people in France Sophie Cluzel. We must improve on adapted sport, break the silos
, she judges.
In Spain, a petition to this effect has reached more than 100,000 signatures on Change.org, that of the parents of Mikel Garcia, winner of the 400, 800 and 1,500 m in his category at the Global Games in 2019.
They ask the CIP for the inclusion of athletes like their son. Once again, people with Down’s syndrome are forced to live in a parallel world.
– .
