Experiencing the Paralympics changes your perceptions

Juan José Méndez Fernández attacked the climb. The strain of the exertion was audible, ‘huh, huh, huh, huh,’ noisy exhalations, through gritted teeth. The Spaniard is 52 years old. Oh and he’s missing his left arm and most of his left leg.

He completed the 71.1 kilometre course in 50 seconds under two hours at an average speed of more than 35kmph, 23rd of 31 competitors, in the same Road Race that Ireland's Eoghan Clifford suffered his misfortune.

Fernandez is a C1 classification, the most severely handicapped, in a race that includes C2 and C3 (Clifford) cyclists. There is no allowance made, no handicap consideration, no chance of winning, yet the Spaniard chose to take part, finishing ahead of several more “able-bodied” rivals.

To try and understand that mindset, of someone who lost his limbs in a motorcycle accident, aged 27, it’s worth noting his stark recollections of the incident. “I passed out on the bike and crashed into a car. I got covered with a blanket until a policeman realised that I was moving.”

Fernandez started cycling to lose weight. “I was almost 100kg and one day I thought, I can’t go on like this, I have to look forward, I want to live.” He won Paralympic medals in Athens and Beijing, gold in a world championship.

The Paralympics has 4,350 backstories of a similar ilk, the genesis of participation in the Games subdivided into life’s genetic lottery, illness or blunt force trauma but most competitors’ stories have a common theme; like Fernandez they wanted to live life, utlising sport as a form of expression. Boy is it eloquent.

Why does someone with no arms and one leg, take up swimming? What possesses someone with one arm and one leg to embrace cycling? At what stage does someone with five per cent vision think they’d like to be blindfolded and take up the long jump?

Paralympic sport challenges convention, often spectacularly so. The participants are not faster – leave the T13 1,500 metres final aside – or stronger, they don’t jump higher than their able-bodied contemporaries but that doesn’t diminish them as sports people.

Challenges

They share the DNA that drives their able-bodied counterparts: desire, commitment, dedication, sacrifice, attention to detail but there is a difference, borne of being different and that imperfect physiology.

Paralympic athletes may struggle to communicate in the diverse tongues of the global village but fundamentally they speak the same language, recognising themselves in one another. They understand the sporting journey and appreciate the long, hard road to get to a Paralympics but also the challenges faced in a daily regimen.

That’s the glue that bonds: the empathy. Maybe that accounts for the warmth of the interaction, smiles that touch the eyes, hugs that are far from perfunctory or stilted, and the genuine atmosphere of camaraderie. But only after the dueling is done.

They also possess the ability to laugh at themselves or others who try to tiptoe around the issue of disability. So when someone asks a legally blind athlete “did they see or bump into anyone famous in the village”, the toys remain in the pram.

They want to be quizzed as sports people, to talk about their athletic achievements rather than have the focus on a backstory. They’re not looking for sympathy; they have too much to be getting on with, to wonder, or care, how others perceive them.

Nor should the Paralympics be viewed as a sporting utopia. As with the able-bodied games, there are blemishes. The subject of classification, particularly but not solely in relation to the degrees of cerebral palsy, for example, has inspired plenty of muttering.

The discrepancy between the best and the rest can occasionally make it underwhelming from a sporting perspective. The gaps need to close just as standards need to rise, as they have done appreciably over the past three Paralympics. The pure athletic standards are improving.

But these are minor cavils, when weighed against the Paralympics experience. The majority of time is spent mouth agape, marvelling at – to borrow the Paralympic motto – “the spirit in motion”, on the track, the court, the road or in the pool.

Despite initial misgivings and poor tickets sales, Rio delivered a colourful and well supported Games, where the financial cutbacks didn’t unduly damage the Paralympics.

Changed perceptions

From a personal standpoint to be afforded an opportunity to become acquainted firsthand with the people and their stories was a memorable experience, particularly those of the Ireland team: 11 medals is a brilliant return, but to really understand the success you have to delve beneath the headlines. It’s not everyday that you get to meet a Philip Eaglesham.

The Paralympics is not without its lighter moments. A favourite involved world number one Polish fencer Adrian Castro; he finally achieved his ambition of winning a Paralympic medal, doing so by beating his teammate and future father-in-law Grzegorz Pluta in a bronze medal fencing bout.

It wasn’t the first time they met as Castro beat Pluta in the world championships final but what added a certain spice was the former’s suggestion that the loser had to pay for the upcoming nuptials. Understandably Pluta took a different view: “Not at all. I haveI lost the bronze medal, he will earn money from winning it so he has to pay now. Of course he has to. He has just won enough money to pay for the wedding.”

Experiencing the Paralympics changes your perceptions – and not just those relating to sport. It recalibrates your outlook, for the better. All the athletes ask is that people engage. It’s a small tariff that’s worth the investment.