Do you have a fused ankle?
Alistair
Britain's World Championship winning Paralympic four. You do not need to
consider yourself to be disabled to classify for this boat and may
already be rowing at a high level in a club, university or school. You
may have a fused ankle because you had an accident, or because you were
born with a club foot. We are looking for men and women who have this or
a similar minimal impairment and who are ambitious to help drive up the
standard of this crew and compete at the world championships in New
Zealand in 2010. If you fit these criteria please contact Tom Dyson or
Mary McLachlan."
(Thank you Rachel.) It is my feeling that there's a whole world of
wrongness lurking in there somewhere.
Carl Douglas
So, while moves are still afoot to keep disabled sprinters out of
able-bodied sport, athletes able-bodied enough to compete successfully
in open competition are being invited into disabled sport.
I'd be interested in the reactions of disabled rowers to this, including
from anyone who might be kept out of that boat by a successful
respondent to this strange appeal.
:(
Carl
--
Carl Douglas Racing Shells -
Fine Small-Boats/AeRoWing Low-drag Riggers/Advanced Accessories
Write: Harris Boatyard, Laleham Reach, Chertsey KT16 8RP, UK
Find: http://tinyurl.com/2tqujf
Email: ca...@carldouglas.co.uk Tel: +44(0)1932-570946 Fax: -563682
URLs: www.carldouglas.co.uk (boats) & www.aerowing.co.uk (riggers)
Stephen and Jane
I have that same instinctive feeling, but I'm struggling to work out exactly
why.
Is that advert any different from this
http://www.uksport.gov.uk/pages/tall_and_talented/ I wonder?
On reflection, perhaps it is that the fused-ankle ad seems to blur the edges
between the disabled/non-disabled categories. It highlights the artificial
and arbitrary nature of such categorisation. It also questions whether
paralympic sport can ever be truly fair, given the diverse nature of the
many disabilities which the organisers try to pigeon-hole and pitch one
against the other. This is not an argument against the disabled having the
opportunity to compete in top-level sport, but a question about how it is
organised and what conclusions can be drawn from the outcome.
Jane
Anne Rogers
Isn't this or something similar the reason for one of the current male
rowers? I recall an article somewhere mentioning that it was a random
realisation of someone that he might be eligible.
I've nothing against the paralympic movement in general, but it leaves
out a huge range of less defineable, less well understood impairments or
degenerative diseases.
To me advertising for participants with this kind of "disability" mocks
adaptive rowing, a sport not as widely participated in as some other
paralympic sports, it's supposed to be ELITE athletes with a disability,
not pretty good athletes who by careful reading of the rule book
enable you to form a crew meeting the minimum requirements.
I wonder what the feeling is in other paralympic sports where teams are
required to have a min or max number of points, I forget which sports
that applies to, but it would be interesting to see how those involved
with those sports feel. I forget the name of the ball game where the
ball has bells in it for blind and partially sighted players
(goalball?), but they all wear masks to put everyone at the same level.
The teams are also bigger than the max of two athletes with a physical
disability in a LTAmix4+, which gives more scope for averaging and
ultimate fairness.
I've not expressed myself well at all, but you can probably get my gist!
When it comes to the point that you're advertising for specific
minimal disabilities it seems like it's gone beyond sport.
Cheers
Anne
Alistair
There's a lady in Britain who's done pretty well at dwarf swimming. She
must have won a few Paralympic medals because she's gone to see the
Queen, had a bit of exposure etc. Once upon I time I would have said
that what she's done is no more impressive than, say, winning the Oxford
Town bumps, and that giving her a quasi-Olympic medal was patronising to
both her and the spectators.
But that's to ignore that life's dealt her a pretty tough set of cards.
It's pretty brave just to get out and start splashing around in a pool
at all if you're a 3.5' adult. If she can show to people in her
circumstances - or similarly people who've recently become amputees,
paralysed - can show off their prowess in a way that gives inspiration
then that's okay with me.
So essentially the Paralympics is a sentimental exercise, which is okay:
we have a deep-seated need for the against-the-odds narrative.
So when you start asking for people who don't fit that narrative at all
- people who might not even know they're disabled - that seems to me to
mock the whole point of the exercise. If the extent of what you've had
to overcome is so minimal that you don't even know you were eligible, it
devalues those with real disabilities.
And if you want a definition of a real disability: it's when you look at
someone with a mixture of sympathy and shame and think there but for the
grace of God go I.
AJP
David Biddulph
news:hfcn56$gea$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
> Alistair wrote:
>> "DO YOU HAVE A FUSED ANKLE? If so, you could become part of Great
>> Britain's World Championship winning Paralympic four. You do not need to
>> consider yourself to be disabled to classify for this boat and may
>> already be rowing at a high level in a club, university or school. You
>> may have a fused ankle because you had an accident, or because you were
>> born with a club foot. We are looking for men and women who have this or
>> a similar minimal impairment and who are ambitious to help drive up the
>> standard of this crew and compete at the world championships in New
>> Zealand in 2010. If you fit these criteria please contact Tom Dyson or
>> Mary McLachlan."
>>
>> (Thank you Rachel.) It is my feeling that there's a whole world of
>> wrongness lurking in there somewhere.
>
> Isn't this or something similar the reason for one of the current male
> rowers? I recall an article somewhere mentioning that it was a random
> realisation of someone that he might be eligible.
David Smith:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/disability_sport/8391403.stm
--
David Biddulph
Rowing web pages at
http://www.biddulph.org.uk/
Tinus
rowing competitions for disabled people is not well organised. Rowing
should be a perfect sport to create fair competitions for disabled
people. Since it is a team sport a combination of disabilities can be
combined in a single team allowing for few classes and large
competitions without much differentiation of severity of disabilities
within a single class. If practice shows that people with a large
difference in disability happen to compete against each other then
rules need to be changed.
In weightlifting they have this Sinclair formula by which they are
able to relate athletic performances of people from different weight
classes. A similar formula might be a good thing to be used in rowing
competitions for disabled people. Formulas are already used in some
small rowing competitions in which people from different weight sex
and boat type compete against each other in the same race.