From Australia: by
ABC's
Stella Young. Stella Young is the editor of
ABC's Ramp Up. She tweets
@stellajyoung.
In March this year swimming enthusiasts sat glued to
their televisions, waiting with baited breath to see the likes of James
Magnussen, Libby Tricket and Ian Thorpe take to the pool and secure
their place in the team for London 2012.
The trials were organised
by Swimming Australia which is, according to its website, "the national
sporting organisation which is responsible for the promotion and
development of swimming in Australia at all levels." The organisation
draws government funding and other significant sponsorship to represent
swimmers both with and without disabilities.
Yet you could be
forgiven for thinking that the televised trials back in March were
purely for non-disabled athletes seeking to make the Olympic team. This
was not the case.
Swimmers such as Matthew Cowdrey (pictured), Rick
Pendleton, Katrina Porter and Matthew Levy, all of whom have won
Paralympic medals in Athens, Beijing or both, were also in the pool
during the course of the trials, but you wouldn't have seen them swim.
You see, they were asked to swim during the ad breaks.
This
didn't go unnoticed by all. Many supporters emailed the organisation,
claiming that they were discriminating against athletes with
disabilities by failing to promote and support them as prominently as
the non-disabled swimmers.
A group made up of athletes' family and
friends of called Parents, Pals and Partners Of Our Swimmers (POOS, for
short) made their dissatisfaction known. They were met with a letter
from Swimming Australia's lawyers, threatening legal action and refusing
to discuss the matter in the lead up to the games.
While I'd have
loved them to come up with a slightly less ludicrous name, the POOS
view that Swimming Australia is disregarding disabled swimmers certainly
has weight.
Disability Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes
agrees. "I think it is pretty disappointing that Swimming Australia
would view the efforts of swimmers with disability as so much less
important than athletes without disability. I bet our paralympians will
bring back more gold."
David Gandolpho, speaking as a representative of POOS on 7.30
this week, said of Swimming Australia: "They are the administration of
swimming. That's all swimming, that's the able-bodied swimming, the
disabled swimming. There shouldn't be any distinction between who
they're looking after or whose interests they're taking care of or
promoting."
Who should they have been promoting? Well, Matt
Cowdrey for one. Despite the fact that most Australian's have never
heard of Cowdrey, he's one of our greatest athletes in the pool.
To
compare him to the likes of James "The Missile" Magnussen would be
unfair. After all, Magnessen's accomplishments, while of course
significant and admirable, pale in comparison to those of Cowdrey. With
just three years on his Swimming Australia colleague, Cowdrey is about
to compete in his third Paralympic Games.
Having broken his first
world record at 13, Cowdrey is well on the way to becoming Australia's
most successful Paralympian. In fact, if he can eclipse Tim Sullivan's
10 gold medals in London, he will. He already has eight under his belt,
along with four silver and two bronze.
Why then is Swimming
Australia not giving him every bit as much support as the Magnussen's of
the sport? Probably for the same reasons they asked him to swim during
the ads; because they assume we just aren't that interested.
Squeezing
in the disabled athletes as though they're little more than half-time
entertainment is telling, not just of the way the organisation views a
proportion of those it represents, but how we have traditionally valued
disability sport.
The Paralympics have for too long been
considered the poor cousin of the Olympics. It's always run after the
main games, and rarely gets anything like the media coverage. The London
2012 Paralympic Games is, in fact, the first to not give away the
majority of event tickets.
The majority of tickets bought for the
Beijing Paralympics were purchased by the government and given away to
community organisations. Of the 2.2 million tickets sold, 1.82 million
were government purchases given away for free. London Organising
Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games has made a deliberate
decision to take a different path, a move welcomed by many Paralympians who believe the giving away of tickets devalues disability sport.
With three weeks to go until the Paralympics opens, 1.4 million
tickets have been snapped up, proving that sports-fans are not as
discriminating as some might think, and that LOCOG's move not to give
them away for free was the right one. People will not only watch
disability sport on television, they'll pay for it.
Swimming Australia needs to get with the times.
