#International Paralympic Committee

[dontforgetukraine]

“Too political”: The International Paralympic Committee refused to approve Ukraine’s team uniform for over two months. A key element of the controversy was a map of Ukraine that included Crimea, a peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. The IPC reportedly objected to this depiction, but the Ukrainian committee successfully argued to keep it. Additionally, the uniform incorporated a shade of green, which the Ukrainian committee described as a "protective" color and a symbol of the country's soldiers. The IPC raised concerns about the military connotations of this color choice. Valerii Sushkevych, the head of the Ukrainian Paralympic Committee, explained, "This form looks military, and the design of the form is very similar to the form of warriors. I believe that this is not a military uniform, but it says a lot. We came here not to a sports festival, not just to fight for a purely sporting [holiday], but also for peace. Those who live in Ukraine will understand why we chose [such a uniform]." Despite the IPC's objections, the Ukrainian team prevailed and will be wearing the contested uniforms in Paris. The design serves as a powerful symbol of Ukraine's ongoing struggle for sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Sources: Euromaidan Press, United 24

[chakjoe]

(a GIPHY -n keresztül )

[coochiequeens]

Speaking about his personal history with the BBC in June 2021, Petrillo said: “Until four years ago, if you’d talked to Fabrizio (the name Petrillo was given at birth), Fabrizio would have given you the idea he was sexist. He was a tough guy who’d speak dismissively of women and then be a woman in his private space.”

Another misogynist who couldn't succeed against other men.

By Genevieve Gluck August 13, 2024

A 50 year-old trans-identified male from Italy is set to become the first man to compete in a women’s category at the Paris Paralympics. Valentina Petrillo, whose birth name is Fabrizio, who competes in the women’s T12 classification, for athletes with visual impairments, and currently holds 8 women’s running championship titles, despite failing to earn even one while competing as a male.

Petrillo has been diagnosed with Stargardt disease, a disorder of the eye that causes retinal degeneration over time. Due to this visual impairment, he has been permitted to compete in both matches designated for women with disabilities, as well as those which are not.

At the Paralympic Games, which are scheduled to run from August 28 to September 8, Petrillo will run in the women’s T12 200m and 400m. He was cleared to compete against female athletes, despite being a man, by International Paralympic Committee (IPC) President Andrew Parsons. The IPC works closely with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the two have self-described as “strategic partners.”

Speaking to BBC Sport, Parsons revealed that the IPC does not enforce an official position for or against allowing men to self-identify into women’s sport, but rather “[allow] individual sports to make their rules in terms of transgender,” which results in rules that are “different from sport to sport.”

“Some are coming with different positions on transgender, or with the criteria to allow them or not to allow them, so I’m not surprised by the repercussions of it,” Parsons said. He added that he hoped the sporting community would “unite” on policies dealing with gender identity.

According to the World Para Athletics Championships guidance on participation, “an athlete shall be eligible to compete in women’s competition if she is recognized as female by law.” But their policy book goes on to note that it will “deal with any cases involving transgender athletes in accordance with the IOC’s transgender guidelines.”

Petrillo first changed his name to Valentina and began taking estrogen in 2019. The following year, he began competing against female athletes and has since broken multiple Italian women’s running records.

Speaking about his personal history with the BBC in June 2021, Petrillo said: “Until four years ago, if you’d talked to Fabrizio (the name Petrillo was given at birth), Fabrizio would have given you the idea he was sexist. He was a tough guy who’d speak dismissively of women and then be a woman in his private space.”

Mariuccia Quilleri, an athlete and lawyer who has represented several female athletes who oppose Petrillo’s participation in women’s races, told the BBC that inclusion had been chosen over fairness and “there is not much more we can do.”

See rest of article

[msclaritea]

[wamathai]

Samsung to use the Galaxy S24 to livestream the 2024 Olympics opening ceremony

Samsung which is a Worldwide Olympic and Paralympic Partner has announced its plans alongside the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) to revolutionize the Paris 2024 broadcast experience for viewers and fans. The new and first-of-its-kind footage will be captured and shared with Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. It will play an integral role in opening up the…

[cy-cyborg]

Hey, just so everyone knows, the Olympics and the Paralympics are two separate events.

They are run/overseen by two separate organisations (the International Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee) and Paralympians are not Olympians (unless they are/have competed in both, of course, but to my knowledge there isn't anyone doing that this year, though there have been a few athletes who did in the past).

If you're talking about things that effect both groups of athletes, say "Olympians and Paralympians", if you're talking about things that only effect the Paralympians or people who are competing in the Paralympics, say "Paralympians". If you're talking about a former athlete who previously competed in the Paralympics, they are not a "former Disabled Olympian", they are a former Paralympian. If you are writing articles or posts about Olympic events/controversies, don't tag the Paralympics unless you actually bring them up in said post or article.

The Paralympics are not "the disabled events at the Olympics" - they are their own thing.

I know to outside perspectives this seems pedantic but there's a very good reason these events are separated the way they currently are. Any time a disabled and abled sporting event is under the same banner, information about the disabled athletes is overwhelmingly drowned out, to the point that even if you know what you're looking for, it will be hard to find things about us (e.g. i spent a few hours today just trying to find out if certain countries have paralympic teams this year, but only got results about those countrys' olympic teams).

Do i wish this didnt have to be the case? Yeah, if you asked me back in the days when I used to play, I would have said they should be one event, but unfortunately we arent there yet, and they still need to be separated both to reduce confusion/being drowned out, and for other reasons that are beyond the scope of this post. Using different terms for our events (Olympics/Paralympics) is supposed to help alleviate these kinds of isses but it doesn't work when people lump us back in together anyway. This is especially important now when so many people are getting their info about these events via social media from other every-day people talking about them instead of from big news sources (regardless of your thoughts on whether this is a good or bad thing)

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

I think invictius is just pissed off it’s not as healthy of an organization as it was when under the royal umbrella. They clearly relied very heavily on the royal family to excute things which is probably why they re-signed Harry to an ambassador role when he left. Only it became very obvious, that Harry’s priorities changed in the after math of the split and that didn’t bode well for invictius. They’ve spent basically 4 years bleeding themselves dry to support Harry and now Meghan and it’s gotten them no further along.

I agree that I think things have been simmering for a while now. And I think they’re are two fractions inside invictius games. There is the IG team themselves and then Harry and Meghan. Harry and Meghan want Birmingham to force the half in half out narrative. ( though I really don’t think this is going to work at all, no one is coming to this mini event next week and William and Charles have been rather clear in recent weeks about that)

The IG team wants Birmingham because they want to phase out Harry and bring in Mike. It’s UK soil and he’s a huge athlete advocate, it also brings in fresh blood with a sprinkle of actual royalty. (Do I think this will happen-no) but I believe this is why they haven’t kicked harry to the curb. There was a pretty massive turn over pre Vancouver, which alluded to issues with funding and securing the next location. I don’t think those have been solved and we haven’t seen harry attend any charity functions to drum up support. Hell he’s thrown a pretty massive tantrum about security for this small (ish) event, they’re chomping at the bit to see him gone.

What I do think will happen is that Birmingham will win it but the gov will completely swap this next election cycle and the funding will disappear. I think IG as we know it will brake away to host smaller country focused events and eventually link up with the warrior games in the us.

Harry and Meghan by extension are stressed about this, they need something- hence Washington DC coming out of left field. If trump wins, I doubt this is held in the way Harry would want.

Yeah, the Washington DC was really out of the blue. It doesn't make sense to bring Invictus Games to the US when we have the Warrior Games here. So to that end, I can see Invictus folding into Warrior Games, like you think. We've also got Germany hosting their own national set of games later this year, which is also pretty significant in the future of these international games.

And it isn't just the Warrior Games here in the US. I don't know what other countries do, but the US Olympics Committee has a huge program supporting military veterans, able-bodied and not, for the Olympics and Paralympics. So the market here is kinda really oversaturated for veterans-based athletic competition and the only way there's space for a US offshoot of Invictus Games is if they merge with and rebrand as Warrior Games.

And maybe that's part of the goal behind Harry cozing up to the US Department of Defense; he wants the US military and Warrior Games to bail Invictus out.

And y'all, I'm warning you now. I'll be watching the comments on this one. If it starts going off on politics because anon mentioned Trump, I'm turning the comments off and deleting them. I get enough crap of politics with work. I do not want it here.

[girlactionfigure]

THURSDAY HERO: Dr. Ludwig Guttman 

Dr. Ludwig Guttmann was a Jewish-German neurosurgeon who had the radical idea that patients with spinal cord injuries could be competitive athletes. He created the Paralympic Games and forever changed the way society views disabled people – and the way they view themselves.

Ludwig was born in Germany in 1899 to a religious family. At age 18, he volunteered in a hospital that treated mining workers. One day, a young man was admitted who had broken his back in a mining accident. The patient was paralyzed from the waist down, but the rest of his body was strong. Ludwig was shocked when the hospital staff told him there was nothing to be done for people with spinal cord injuries but wait for them to die. They wrapped this vigorous young man’s body in plaster and moved him to an isolation wing, where he developed sepsis and died five weeks later. “Although I saw many more victims suffering the same fate,” Ludwig said, “it was the picture of that young man which remained indelibly fixed in my memory.”

After attending medical school in Freiburg, Ludwig worked with Europe’s leading neurologist Dr. Otfrid Foerster. In 1928, Ludwig started a neurosurgical unit at a hospital in Hamburg, and by 1933 he was considered one of the top neurosurgeons in Germany. When the Nazis came to power Jews were banned from practicing medicine and Ludwig lost his job. In 1939 he left Germany with his family and moved to Oxford, England, where he worked as a researcher.

In 1943, Ludwig was asked by the British Government to direct a new Spinal Injury Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. He agreed to take the job, but only if he was free to treat patients as he saw fit without any outside interference. Ludwig was determined to change the medical establishment’s defeatist attitude toward spinal cord injuries. He believed that patients could lead full, independent and happy lives. At Stoke Mandeville, Ludwig instituted educational programs so that patients could learn new skills to make them employable. These programs included carpentry, typing, and watch repair.

A crucial part of the Stoke Mandeville rehabilitation program was athletics. Since there was virtually no precedent for wheelchair sports, Ludwig and his staff had to make them up. The first sport was wheelchair polo using walking sticks and a puck, soon to be replaced with wheelchair basketball. The first athletic competition at Stoke Mandeville took place on July 28, 1948 – the same day as the London Olympics. Fourteen injured service people competed (12 men and 2 women) in one sport, archery. A trophy cup was awarded to the winner.

Only one year later, the competition had grown to include more hospitals, more participants, and more sports. Ludwig said, “I foresaw the time when this sports event would be truly international and the Stoke Mandeville Games would achieve world fame as the disabled person’s equivalent of the Olympic Games.” In 1952, a group of disabled Dutch veterans became the first competitors from overseas. By 1954, there were athletes from Canada, Australia, Finland, Egypt and Israel. In the late 1950’s, Ludwig reached out to the Olympic Games Committee to see if the Stoke Mandeville Games could be scheduled to coincide with the 1960 Olympics in Rome. The Olympic Committee agreed, and disabled athletes came to Rome from 21 countries, playing in the same facilities and sharing the same accommodations as the able-bodied athletes.

The games became known as the Paralympics. Ludwig died in 1980, but his dream continues to grow. The Paralympics now features over 4000 athletes competing in 28 sports.

For refusing to accept the status quo, and giving hope and inspiration to generations of disabled athletes, we honor Dr. Ludwig Guttmann as this week’s Thursday Hero at Accidental Talmudist.

[15-lizards]

loved your asoiaf characters and their olympic sports post!

do you have any more thoughts for other characters?

So many

Theon is in skateboarding but he couldn’t compete in the last games bc he failed his drug test. When he finally makes it he talks big game but gets nervous during his actual runs and busts his ass like twelve different times. Also he has beef with the twelve year old skaters. Also he sees Tony Hawk and the crowd and almost pisses himself then eats shit again. Safe to say he does not medal

Meera is in archery, she gets her first gold when she’s like 15. A modest prodigy. Kinda like that Turkish Olympic shooter who’s going viral rn for having no special gear just vibes. Has no fancy lenses or gloves or anything she just shows up, shoots a bunch of bullseyes, goes :], gets her gold medal, and disappears off the face of the earth for another four years.

Bran is in the Paralympics for archery, cause he watched Meera on tv when he was younger and freshly wheelchair bound, and was inspired 🥺 gets lots of love online for being such a wide eyed cutie. All of his interviews are precious. His siblings are in the stands at every match screaming for him (especially Robb). Robb never misses a chance to promote his brother to the cameras after his own rugby games, and literally runs onto the field to hug him after bran wins his first silver

Oberyn is a beach volleyball veteran, and goes viral without fail every four years. Lifts up his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face and suddenly everyone’s rooting for a Dornish gold medal. Insanely talented and more than a little bit cocky about it, but he still funds volleyball programs for underprivileged youth (good for the pr). Messy personal life, his Wikipedia page is like a gossip tabloid for his drug and sex scandals. Also raises up all his daughters to be olympians of course.

Renly does fencing and the international committee literally banks on his pretty boy looks to get people invested in the sport. Very quick on his feet, and usually darts around to avoid getting hit. Twitter artists love using him for drawing references for some reason. Twitter fujos ship him with whatever other hot fencer they see him talking to. Which is fair bc he usually is fucking them but his main boyfriend is rugby player Loras 💜

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

PARIS 2024 🇫🇷 Adieu to Summer of Unforgettable Games

Paralympics - Closing Ceremony - Paris, France - September 8, 2024

Closing ceremony: Santa shines with Johnny Hallyday cover at the Stade de France. The Paralympic Games end with a closing ceremony that takes the form of a huge electro party to celebrate the athletes.

Santa opened the final ceremony of the Paris 2024 Games with Johnny Hallyday’s classic "Vivre pour le Meilleur".

Breaking takes the stage!

This modern dance with a strong power of inclusion is featured in the closing ceremony. A celebration of diversity to the beats of Cut Killer 🎉 @Thomajolly, Directeur artistique des cérémonies de Paris 2024

International Paralympic Committee President Andrew Parsons Closing Ceremony speech

Tony Estanguet, the president of Paris 2024, addresses the crowd.

The evening kicks off perfectly with Jean Michel Jarre igniting the Stade de France.

Picture by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

The Paralympic Flame arrived at the Stade de France, the lantern as it passed from one Paralympic athlete to another until arriving in the hands of three-time Paris 2024 champion in Para-cycling road Mathieu Bosredon and France’s first Paralympic boccia champion Aurelie Aubert.

Together they blew out the flame and, as they did, the flame in the hot-air balloon cauldron suspended in the air over the Tuileries Garden

“Let's keep doing, let's keep believing and above all... let's keep daring."

The Paralympic Flame is extinguished, and the Paris 2024 Games have come to an end. (darn dust in the eye) 📸 Getty / Graham Denholm

The job is done!

Merci beaucoup! Paris 🇫🇷

Now it's your turn @LA28 🇺🇸 and make us dream in four years!

#Paralympics #Paris2024 #closingceremony #@LA28 #Paris

Posted 8th September 2024

[theivorlegov1]

DSC_2753 by International Paralympic Committee Via Flickr: ©Pedro Vasconcelos

[missriyochuchi]

Au revoir, Tony Estanguet, handsome French organizer who equated Paralympians with revolutionaries. Merci beaucoup, Andrew Parsons, International Paralympic Committee president, for emphasizing inclusion and accessibility beyond the Games.

[coochiequeens]

Another example for SheWon

ByAnna Slatz

July 13, 2023

A 49-year-old trans-identified male seized the bronze medal in the women’s 400m T12 running competition at the 2023 World Para Athletics Championships in Paris. Valentina Petrillo holds several women’s titles and had broken multiple women’s running records, but won his first women’s world championship medal at Chartley Stadium today.

Petrillo, born Fabrizio, was racing against Omara Durand of Cuba, Alejandra Perez Lopez of Venezuela, and Fatima Ezzahra El Idrissi of Morocco. Due to their visual disability, Durand and Lopez competed with guides, who were wearing bright yellow vests and assisted the women to ensure they stayed on the course of the track.

In the final result for the 400m race in the T12 visual impairments category, Petrillo took the bronze, displacing El Idrissi.

According to the World Para Athletics Championships guidance on participation, “an athlete shall be eligible to compete in women’s competition if she is recognized as female by law.” But their policy book goes on to note that it will “deal with any cases involving transgender athletes in accordance with the [International Olympic Committee’s] transgender guidelines.”

Peter Eriksson, the record-making former head coach for the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic program, spoke to Reduxx on Petrillo’s bronze placement.

“It’s shocking to see that women’s opportunities to a medal were taken by a cheating 49-year-old male,” Eriksson said. “The International Paralympic Committee is diminishing the rights of fairness in women’s sport by allowing transgender athletes at their events.”

Eriksson calls the World Para Athletics guidelines a “cop-out,” noting that every sporting authority has the ability to create their own rules. He also says that World Para Athletics policy was adapted from that of World Athletics, which recently ruled that trans-identified males who underwent a male puberty were no longer eligible to participate in women’s championship competitions.

“It’s a cop-out not to make a stance in support of women in sport. It feels kind of like they are trying to push the blame onto the IOC,” Eriksson says. “They adapted World Athletics rules and should also adopt the World Athletics regulation on transgender and DSD participation.”

As previously reported by Reduxx, Petrillo currently holds 8 women’s running championship titles, but failed to earn even one while competing as a male. Petrillo first changed his name to Valentina and began taking estrogen in 2019. The following year, he began competing against female athletes and has since broken multiple Italian women’s running records.

Petrillo has been diagnosed with Stargardt disease, a disorder of the eye that causes retinal degeneration over time. Due to this visual impairment, he has been permitted to compete in both matches designated for women with disabilities, as well as those which are not.

In September 2020, Petrillo raced in the women’s 100-, 200- and 400-meter competitions at the Italian Paralympic Athletics Championships in Jesolo, despite not having undergone “gender affirming” surgery.

At the time, Petrillo hadn’t even updated his identification documents, which still listed his sex as male, though this did not prevent him from being entered into the match. He won first place in all three races and therefore qualified to represent Italy at the Tokyo Olympic Games. But after a last-minute intervention by the Italian government, Petrillo was barred from competing against women with disabilities at the Paralympics in 2021.

At the Master’s Athletics Championships in Arezzo in October 2020, Petrillo outpaced both Cristina Sanulli and Denise Neumann, both of whom had previously won world and European Masters titles and have been regarded as the best in their events. Sanulli and Neumann would later sign a petition calling for men to be barred from women’s sport.

In March of this year, Petrillo competed in and took the win at the 200m race for women aged 50 to 54 at the Italian Indoor Masters Championship in Ancona.

Leading up to the race, a women’s rights advocacy group called RadFem Italia contacted government officials to ensure that Petrillo would not be granted access to the women’s locker rooms. In response, Petrillo was provided with a designated changing room specifically for him at the race grounds.

Petrillo soon after lashed out in a Facebook post wherein he equated criticism of his presence in women’s sports to Nazism, telling detractors they were “on the same level as Hitler” and comparing sex-based sports categories to a 1936 ban on Jewish athletes.

Upset at being denied the use of the women’s locker room, Petrillo wrote, “In Ancona, you made me have a terrible time, it is not fair… you’ve relegated me to a ‘dedicated’ locker room,” a situation which he claimed was similar to the segregation of those called appestati, or sufferers of a plague.

Reduxx also previously revealed that Petrillo admitted that he used to “try on his mother’s clothes” when he was younger, a behavior that was considered a symptom of a sexual disorder known as transvestic fetishism until recently.

He has also said that prior to declaring a transgender identity he would steal his wife’s clothing. While describing a memory of “touching” his mother’s skirt for the first time, Petrillo said, “It was an incredible emotion. It was like touching heaven with your finger tip.”

[head-post]

French athletes banned from wearing hijab at Olympics

France imposed a disqualification on its national team players, banning them from wearing Muslim headscarf.

The country is preparing to host the Games from 26 July to 11 August and the Paralympic Games from 28 August to 8 September. French Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra originally announced the ban on 24 September 2023.

A few days later, Oudéa-Castéra confirmed that no woman in her country’s delegation would wear the hijab during the Paris Olympics. After the ban was announced, Marta Hurtado, the spokeswoman for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), argued that the ban was wrong.

No one should impose on a woman what she needs to wear or not wear.

On 24 May this year, Amnesty International and a number of other organisations came together to send a letter about the ban to the International Olympic Committee (IOC). It called on the IOC to publicly call on the French sports authorities to lift all restrictions on French athletes wearing the hijab at both the Paris Olympics and all sporting events.

Amnesty International also stated that the IOC had responded inadequately to the joint letter.

In its response, the IOC stated that the hijab ban in France was outside the committee’s remit and that “freedom of religion is interpreted in many different ways by different states.” Amnesty International said the hijab ban demonstrated the existence of a “discriminatory double standard” policy in the country.

The statement also said the ban showed the “discriminatory hypocrisy” of the French authorities ahead of the Paris Olympics and the “weakness” of the IOC in its response.

Read more HERE

[hillbilly---man]

Controversial Olympics opinions:

(been listening to too many olympics podcasts lately so my brain is stuck on it lmao. Sorry about it)

They should get rid of golf It's only been in the Olympics like five times (and the first two times were in 1900 and 1904... let's be real). And we shouldn't be making host cities build golf courses!

Tbh they should get rid of sports for which the Olympics aren't the most prestigious international competition The Olympic Games are a good way to showcase smaller sports, but there's no room in the program for much expansion. Take out tennis, take out golf, take out football (soccer)

Strongly reconsider equestrian events Personally I think it's weird that there are events where horses are so central. If motor sports aren't permitted, it seems odd that horses are. It also rubs me the wrong way that equestrian events feel so much more.. upper-class than the rest. Honestly I'll stop short of saying "get rid of these" because I admittedly don't know much about the sport

Bring back tug-of-war It's easy to understand, and wouldn't require an extra facility or anything. It's also a sport that doesn't require expensive equipment or specialized training facilities... a low barrier of entry means you don't have to be wealthy to be competitive. It would be so cool

Consider permanent hosts I do like the idea of moving the Games around so that we get to see elements of local culture embedded into the Olympics. It's a showcase not only for the athletics but also the arts (I have more to say on that next). Unfortunately, the Olympics has gotten to a point where it's difficult to find a host city that's able to support the Games. Can you imagine a village of like 2300 people like Lake Placid hosting the Olympics today?? Not to mention the displacement and other human rights violations that are often tied to the preparations... There are people who think they should just pick a city each for the Summer and Winter Olympics and have them be a permanent host. That's certainly better than destroying lives and local economies like it does now... but what about that cultural showcase thing? I have an idea: Permanent host locations, but invite a different nation to organize each time. That way smaller, poorer countries can "host" and showcase themselves without the enormous cost and difficulty of physically hosting. Also don't let them both be in fucking France

Bring back the art competitions! There were official art competitions as part of the Olympics in the early days, but they voted to replace them with exhibitions in the 50s. I just think it'd be cool for someone to get a gold medal in music or architecture nowadays.

Fucking pay the athletes As much goddamn money as the IOC makes, it's criminal that it's on the backs of people who they're not even paying to be there. Most Olympic athletes aren't raking in massive endorsement deals, and a lot of them are paying to get there out of their own pockets or via GoFundMe. Pay the volunteers, too, while you're at it. You don't have to make them rich, just make it so you don't have to already be well-off to do it.

Let indigenous nations compete as their own team if they want There's talk of allowing the Haudenosaunee Nation to enter a lacrosse team at the 2028 Olympics, but the IOC isn't in favor as of now because they don't have their own National Olympic Committee. Bad excuse; make an exception. After all, the Refugee Olympic Team exists. Y'all literally make the rules

Ban Israel They banned South Africa for decades due to Apartheid. They've banned several other nations due to wartime actions. There's precedent; they can do this (they won't)

Incorporate the Paralympics into the Olympics (if they want) The parenthetical is there bc I don't know enough about what the Paralympic athletes actually want. If they prefer their own event, swag HOWEVER, from an outsider's perspective, I think it's kind of frustrating how it's treated as a secondary competition. There's less coverage, less attention, and the medals don't count the same in the eyes of most people. For example: did you know that American swimmer Trischa Zorn has 41 gold medals? Michael Phelps just has 23. But HE'S the one who gets to be the "most decorated Olympian of all time" because Trischa's medals are in the Paralympic Games. I think seeing adapted sports alongside their conventional counterparts would be fascinating. Put those in primetime with everything else! People who don't care to seek them out need to see disabled athletes too