Yahoo Sports 2024 Paralympics: How Young Disabled Athletes Navigate Sports and Activism
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The Paralympics, like its able-bodied sibling, is supposedly an apolitical event. But that’s strongly at odds with the fact that being disabled, having that identity, can be seen as an inherently political declaration. Ahead of the 2024 Paralympics, which opened this month in Paris, Teen Vogue spoke to several elite disabled athletes about navigating their professional careers while advocating for themselves and others.
Brian Bell, a US wheelchair-basketball athlete, tells Teen Vogue that he felt compelled to share his story in a summer 2020 article because he was “deeply affected” by the events surrounding George Floyd’s death. “As a Black athlete competing at the Paralympic level, I've navigated racial barriers within both the disabled and non-disabled communities,” Bell says. “I felt a strong responsibility to leverage my platform and speak out about these issues, particularly regarding the experiences of Black disabled athletes. The positive response from fellow athletes and advocates in the disability space was truly validating. It underscored the importance of using my voice to promote racial equity and advocate for a more inclusive sporting world.”
The tension between athletics and activism is also felt by Scout Bassett, a track and field athlete who now runs a funding project, the Scout Bassett Fund. She's not a fan of the politicization of disability, she says, but the para-sport movement has to recognize where inequities still exist. It was the lack of gender equality that she saw at the 2016 Paralympics that led her to start the fund.
“I remember competing at my first games and being like, 'Wow, there's not a lot of women here, or not as many as I would expect,'" Bassett tells Teen Vogue. "And I was shocked to find out that [some of] the sports and events that are offered to men at the Paralympics aren't offered to women.”
Of the athletes competing at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, just 40.5% were women, according to research published in the academic journal Sociology in Sport. This disparity was even larger during the most recent winter games, where less than a quarter of the athletes were women. It should also be noted that the Paralympics shares its lack of trans and nonbinary inclusiveness with the Olympics, though efforts to change that paradigm have been long and ongoing.
Says Bassett, she’s found it hard to be an advocate within the Paralympic movement because of expectations placed on her by the systems at play. “I've at times felt like I've been afraid to speak out because I might not get selected to a team, I might lose a deal, a partner, an opportunity,” she explains. “And sometimes it is hard to be out there, putting yourself out there in a position for criticism, or [hearing], ‘Why don't you just stick to running and leave, you know, the rest of the stuff out?'”
For many disabled athletes, such as University of Arizona wheelchair-basketball team member Lily Lautenschlager, joining a para-sport — in her case, tennis — changes their worldview. “I’d never thought about ableism or access difficulties," she recalls. "That was just something that I was like, Oh, yeah, okay, this building doesn't have a ramp. It happens. And then I joined the tennis community, and I was like, Wait a minute. These people are telling me that should not happen, which makes sense.”
In the US, barriers to participation for para-sport athletes have often led straight to a courtroom. Even at the university level, where para-sport programs are growing, they often fall under recreational or disability-focused departments rather than traditional athletic departments. That leaves coaches and administrators advocating for recognition and funding to grow the movement.
While Lautenschlager hasn’t had to resort to a legal dispute, she and her family had to actively advocate for her to be allowed to compete against her peers. “When tryouts started, I had to have the rule book with me. The coaches were great — I loved the coaches — but there was a little bit of pushback from the athletic community within our city. They were kind of like, ‘Um, this has never been done before.' And we're like, 'Well, it's legal, and you have to, otherwise [it’s] discrimination.'”
At the University of Arizona, Lautenschlager says, she has found herself needing to be vocal in advocating for the skill of her team while also battling systemic barriers on campus. Sometimes, she notes, that has meant explaining that the schools' wheelchair-basketball teams are higher ranked than their able-bodied counterparts, and other times it has meant pointing out inaccessibility to organizers when an event has been held on grass that's a long way from the sidewalk. (Teen Vogue reached out to the University of Arizona for comment.)
“We went and made a point… like, ‘Hey, we want to come, we want more people in wheelchairs and with mobility aids to be able to come. But it's kind of hard for us to get around.' And yeah, technically, it does follow ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act]. But it's really, really difficult for us to deal with.’’
To put yourself out there in this way can be hard, and it’s something Basset cautions young para-athletes to remember they don’t have to do. “I think sometimes we also need to consider the fact that not everybody with a disability wants to be an advocate for disability or disability issues," she says. "And I don't think that everybody needs or has to be… but I do think that if an athlete, a young athlete, is coming into para-sports, and they want to be more than just an athlete, it's important to find a topic and issue that is important to you, that is personal, that's something you're passionate about — and to use the opportunities that you have to speak out on those.”
For Basset, part of that passion is drawing back the curtain to point out the systemic barriers that para-sport athletes face outside of splashy events like the Paralympics. “When athletes go home, they're struggling to get employed, they're struggling to make a living doing this, they're struggling with accessibility issues, whether it be from technology or for transportation," she explains. “And yet those are all things that most people wouldn't get to see or experience…” The sporting stage is just a glimpse, it’s just a moment in time, but it's not necessarily the day-to-day.
Activism in the para-sport movement isn’t always outward facing. There is cross-disability organizing within given sports; there are athletes who have to advocate to even be included — the International Paralympic committee allows those with only specific disabilities to compete — and there are many multiply marginalized athletes who are grappling with what it means to hold multiple identities at once.
Says Lautenschlager, her advice to those looking to balance activism with para-sport is, be at peace with the fact that changes you are fighting for now are fruits you might not get to enjoy. For her, this realization came when she pushed forward efforts to change her school district’s history curriculum so that it included disability history. “Sometimes you're not making the changes for yourself. And it does suck that you don't get to experience the hard work you put in,” she says. “But knowing that other people get that payoff is almost a lot better, because it just makes you feel good.”
Lautenschlager adds that, while she was lucky to see a small portion of her approved curriculum changes take effect before she graduated, that wasn’t the point; the whole process was about speaking out. “I think it is almost impossible to completely eliminate activism and politics from sport, just because the two fields are just so intricately intertwined,” she says. “For athletes who are at that elite level, being an activist and standing up for what you believe in is very important. Because if they don't stand up for it, then who will?”
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Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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