The 2024 Paralympics began in spectacular fashion, with participants marching down Paris' Champs-Élysées to Place de la Concorde, a cobblestoned street temporarily resurfaced with asphalt to improve accessibility.
The competitions for impaired athletes have also featured several well-known cheerleaders. All-time
Olympic greats Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky encouraged people to watch, and Snoop Dogg, fresh from his role as a hype man for the Olympics in Paris, cut an ad for the Paralympic Games.
Visibility will be the highest it has ever been. The International Paralympic Committee has stated that over 225 media rights holders, including broadcasters, streamers, internet, social, and audio outlets, will cover the Games.
One believes that the unprecedented media attention would assist sports including impaired athletes gain traction. Indeed, some of the Olympic Games
Paralympic Games, as American long jumper Tara Davis Woodhall, who had just won the gold medal, dashed to the stands and jumped into the arms of her husband, Hunter Woodhall, a sprinter with three Paralympic medals from Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro.
Hunter Woodhall, 25, who was born with fibular hemimelia and is a double amputee, ran in the first round of the men's 100-meter T64 on Sunday and will run in the final on Monday.
The coverage of impaired athletes, as well as how viewers respond to that coverage, must be consistent with what happens when nondisabled athletes compete.
We don't watch the United States Women's National Soccer Team to be inspired by the fact that women can play soccer; we watch because American women are good and play soccer better than males.
Women's basketball is gaining popularity, thanks in part to the perception that Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese are exceptional basketball players rather than icons of what females can achieve if they don't give up.
The Paralympics provide a significant chance for impaired competitors. Broadcasting the games is not an act of charity.