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The Challenges Of The Paralympic And Olympic Games And The Paralympic Games

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There has been recent debate on whether the Paralympic and Olympic games should remain as they are as two individual sporting events, or whether they should merge into one mega-event to become ‘truly inclusive’. Ferdman and Deane (2015) state that inclusion involves both being fully ourselves and allowing others to be fully themselves in the context of engaging in common pursuits. DePaw and Gavron refers to disability sport as ‘Sport that has been designed for or is specifically practiced by athletes with disabilities. You are disabled under the equality act 2010 (www.legislation.gov.uk, 2017) if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial and ‘long term’ negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. …show more content…

Smith states that delivering the Paralympics to the public is best done by media exposure, and the greatest way to get your message out is by mass media – TV, radio and newspapers – which the vast majority of the public, no matter what languages they speak, consume daily. Thomas and Smith (2008) state that media coverage be really – including print and TV coverage – of the Paralympics has increased since the 1980's. The press treatment and social significance of the sporting performances of disabled athletes remains considerably lower than that afforded non-disabled athletes, and global sporting events such as the Olympics and world cup. Reflecting on this, whilst Paralympic viewing figures are considerably lower than those of the Olympics, they have continued to rise over recent years. Data gathered by Nielsen sports suggests that 4.1. billion people around he world watched the 2016 Rio Paralympic games – making it the most viewed in the events history. Whilst viewing figures show the height of public engagement, the focus should maybe be less on viewing figures and more on the confirmation that people are indeed engaging with the Paralympics, therefore, justifying they are of importance and they have their place in the world of Sport. Pardue states that ‘The sporting performances of Paralympian’s at The Paralympic Games are deemed to have the potential to heighten awareness and knowledge of Paralympic sport as well

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