Episode 215: 2020/21 Tokyo Paralympic Preview
In this episode Jessica Luther, Amira Rose Davis, Lindsay Gibbs and Brenda Elsey preview the 2020/21 Tokyo Paralympic Games, which start TODAY, August 24, and close September 5, 2021.
First they discuss some of the major storylines around the games, including fights for equity for disabled athletes, who is "inspiration" for?, and how the Paralympics show disparities between nation-states. You'll also hear from disability activist Katelyn Steele and 2x gold medal Paralympic swimmer Kelly Crowley. Then, they preview of some the sports and competitors they are looking forward to watching in the games.
This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Links
Charles Catherine: Why a separate Paralympics should end and a unified Olympic Games should begin https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/08/15/why-unified-olympics-should-replace-paralympics-column/3362822001
With Games Approaching, Paralympians Say They Need More Support: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/10/sports/olympics/paralympics-travel-tokyo
Tatyana McFadden Calls Out Differences Between Olympic, Paralympic Family Experience: https://www.si.com/olympics/2021/07/21/tatyana-mcfadden-calls-out-differences-paralympics-olympics-family-experience
Who Is Zakia Khudadadi? All You Need To Know About Afghanistan's First* Female Paralympian: https://www.republicworld.com/sports-news/other-sports/who-is-zakia-khudadadi-all-you-need-to-know-about-afghanistans-first-female-paralympian
*Afghanistan’s first female Paralympian: paralympic.org/mareena-karim
NBC 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games TV schedule: https://www.nbcolympics.com/news/2020-tokyo-paralympic-games-tv-schedule
Transcript
Jessica: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. I'm Jessica, and I'm joined by Amira, Brenda, and Lindsay. This episode is part of our Paralympics Week on Burn It All Down. Today, Tuesday, August 24th, is the start of the Paralympics in Tokyo. They're already happening as you are listening. They run through September 5th. To celebrate, we have a slate of sound coming at you. Hopefully you caught our re-air yesterday of my interviews from last year with para athletes Kristin Duquette and Lacey Henderson. That includes an update from both of them. Tomorrow we will re-air Amira's interview from 2018 with Dr. Jonna Belanger about disability awareness and sport, and how athletes with varying disabilities are grouped for Paralympic competition. On Thursday, Amira talks to Lindsay Rich, the New York Times Tokyo bureau chief, about what is happening on the ground there. And we'll have additional coverage in the coming days. On this week’s show, we're going to start with a discussion about the Paralympics, and then we'll tell you about some sports and athletes you should be paying attention to over the next two weeks of competition. Let’s go.
The Paralympics first took place in Rome in 1960, when 400 athletes from 23 countries participated. Since 1988 in Seoul and 1992 in Albertville, the Paralympics have taken place in the same cities and venues as the Olympics. They now take place a few weeks after the Olympics. Like so much in sports and society, there's a tension in this delay between the Olympics and the Paralympics. Separating them gives Paralympians their own platform and space to showcase their athletic prowess. But as Charles Catherine, a blind para athlete and associate director of special projects at the National Organization on Disability, wrote for USA Today last year, “The separate competition feels like a side show, a reflection of a painful reality. We still think of disability as something ‘other’.”
I'll just say upfront: we recognize that this is a complicated topic. We think it's worth thinking about this and questioning the status quo as the games get started today. Lindsay, can you talk to us about the name change from the US Olympic Committee to the USOPC, the US Olympic and Paralympic committee?
Lindsay: So, the name change happened in June of 2019, where, like you said, the US Olympic committee changed its name and did a full rebranding to officially become the US Olympic and Paralympic committee. I remember when it first happened it was very soon after the Nassar stuff. Everyone was being sued. They were in so much trouble. And I think there was a little bit for me, a fear that like, are we using this as a rebranding opportunity? Like, are we using Paralympians in this very disingenuous way? But the more research I did, I think the name change actually meant a lot to Paralympians and it just put them on the same platform, and it also came at the same time that the US Olympic Committee announced that it was giving equal prize money for medals to Olympians and Paralympians. So I actually am not as cynical like about this. I think the name change is a great thing.
Jessica: Hm, that’s so interesting. Amira, will you talk to us about the way that inspiration works here?
Amira: Yeah. I mean, I think it's one of those things, like you said, about the tension, right? Where one of the ways the Paralympic games are mass-packaged is really as some athletes have referred to as “inspiration porn,” as narratives that we’re familiar with the Olympics, but added in a certain performance of trauma or really invasive kind of questioning around disability and the story behind the disability, et cetera, et cetera. And I think there's a great thread, for instance, the other day, that was like, “If you're looking for more inspiration porn, look away.” And instead the thread was like really dope promos of wheelchair rugby without any kind of soft music and fluff.
But I think that there's also a gap between this rhetoric of inspiration and what actually happens in terms of investment. And we're seeing that in real time happen, especially at the Paralympic games in Tokyo. Tokyo, of course, really excited – they’ve just become the first place to hold for the second time a Paralympic Games there; in 1964, of course, they held it. But COVID is surging still, and during a recent press conference, they affirmed that no spectators would be there except they were still letting 140,000 school age children from Tokyo go. When pressed on this, given the rise in COVID cases, CEO of the games Muto said that it’s just such an inspiration that they wanted the kids to be able to see it. And here we have that rhetoric coming up again.
And my interview, that I hope you'll check out on Thursday, is with Motoko Rich, because Motoko has had conversations on the ground with Tokyo disability activists who are like, [laughs] what is this inspiration? Like, we still don't have ramps and buildings we're asking for ramps for! The gap is really vast. And I think that that to me is where I start looking at the effects of that tension, which is like, how is it being used as a shield? And in what ways is it really operating? Who's being inspired, I guess it comes down to.
Jessica: Hmm. Yeah. Who's the audience for that?
Brenda: Well, like for most things disabilities-related, I asked my sister, disability activist Katelyn Steele in Michigan, how she felt about being inspired or not by these Paralympics.
Katelyn: I'm Katelyn Steele, I've been a quadriplegic for about 11 years. And I honestly knew nothing about the Paralympics before I became paralyzed myself. The first time I watched the games, I could not pick my jaw up off the floor. From my perspective, the word “inspiration” is used so often towards disabled individuals. In my case, it's often received with a silent eye roll or a fake grin. As someone with a disability, you're used to being the underdog, but at the end of the day, we're all just living life. That being said, these athletes, disabled or not, are not only inspirational – heck, that's probably an understatement. But there's seriously super humans. The gifts that they have, the sacrifices that they make, and all of their dedication through sports make them inspirational. It's so inspiring to see someone who looks like you accomplishing things beyond your wildest dreams.
Brenda: And so I think what we see is that it speaks to Amira’s point, Jess’s point, what we're all making, which is inspiration for whom? On what terms? And can you actually build something constructively out of that inspiration in certain types of communities? And who needs to be leading the way in terms of creating the narrative? One of the things that's so frustrating – beyond just basic resources – has also been as a family member of someone with a disability, the fundamental misunderstanding of the needs beyond infrastructure, and that includes caregivers. And that was highlighted by Becca Meyers, a para swimmer pulling out of the Paralympics when she could not bring her mother to accompany her. And for a lot of people that don't understand…Anything. I don't know how you can get through life without any of this, but some people are lucky enough to do it.
The US Olympic Committee just did not understand the emotional, financial and technical needs of people with these different disabilities. My parents can cath anytime, anywhere, 95% faster than the nurses out there. It's not just about having someone you're comfortable with. It's not just about having a family member. It's about those family members actually being the experts. You can rely on those family members and caregivers that are long-term, whether they're blood-related or not to you. And so anyway, that's been something too that I wanted to add about being “inspired” in these games means not just financial resources but actually taking the time to learn something about the other kinds of resources that you need.
Lindsay: Yeah. That article, the New York Times article, With Games Approaching, Paralympians Say They Need More Support, had so many staggering details in it for me. Athletes with intellectual disabilities not being given someone to travel with them and getting lost in airports and missing connecting flights. A lot of the wheelchair athletes say they try and get on the same flight as the visually impaired athletes so that they can help guide them in airports, because there's nobody to do that! That article said Becca Meyers, her mom wasn't with her in Rio and she couldn't find the cafeteria. No one was telling her where the cafeteria was and how to get there. And she didn't eat for multiple days and wasn't nourished enough to actually compete!
Jessica: That's unconscionable.
Lindsay: It's staggering! And then this is much less than food, but I found out that this is the first year that the medals have different circular indentations so that athletes with vision impairments can know if they're gold, silver, or bronze!
Jessica: Wow.
Lindsay:That just happened this year! So they're giving these athletes the medals, and they would have braille for like what year it was, but they just added three dots, two dots or one dots so they can know what medal it is. And that like blew me over.
Jessica: Yeah. Amira, there's other stuff going on right now around equity between the Paralympics and the Olympics, yeah?
Amira: Yeah. This year, Paralympians are also drawing attention to the disparities that their families are experiencing in terms of the curated experience being offered to them by NBC. And so Tatyana McFadden, a Paralympic athlete on Team USA, posted a caption with a series of images. Her caption read, “We're looking for equity when it comes to the Paralympics. This is not something new that we have to deal with.” And mentioned that during the games, Olympic families who were hosted by NBC in Orlando received tickets to Universal, a four-day stay. They were in Loews Sapphire, a huge, very fancy, very bougie resort. Paralympians are hosted by Team Toyota, and Team Toyota has been invested in Team USA Paralympics. That's been great, but the experience that the families are being offered there is to go to Colorado Springs, Colorado. They're at a hotel called the Antlers Hotel, and they get a pass to the US Olympic and Paralympic museum.
And so many Paralympians were using this to talk about how their experiences that their family members are experiencing also feels second-class and goes right along with this overall concern about feeling like you're being handed breadcrumbs and told to be appreciative of that. And one quick perusal in the comments should be very familiar to our listeners for rhetoric that we hear, say, around March Madness, where everybody was saying, oh, “It's a revenue thing. You shouldn't be mad. Why are you mad? At least you should be happy.” And I think it's very familiar, whenever we talk about equity versus equality in sporting communities.
Jessica: Brenda, what's your solution?
Brenda: My knee-jerk reaction is to integrate the Paralympics or to have them go first, actually. But I figured I'd ask my sister. So once again, here's Katie.
Katelyn: In regard to integrating the Paralympics and Olympics, it's kind of a loaded question. In a perfect world, the Paralympics would receive the same advertising, accessible accommodations and resources, which might lead to a better understanding of the disabled population as a whole. On the other hand, we as peoples with disabilities are different – in my opinion, in the best ways. But our society doesn't quite know what to think about us sometimes. Many of us are dependent upon an extra set of hands, a legs, eyes, whichever the case may be, to accompany us, just to ensure we're able to safely get from A to B, or even complete your normal daily living activities. These are not things that we ask for, trust me. But there are things that we require, at home, at practice, in a car, on a plane, and every moment in between. The lack of knowledge about the needs of the disabled population is a huge barrier to our access and equality just in general, but the Olympics included.
Jessica: And here's two time gold medalist, Paralympian Kelly Crowley, on this debate.
Kelly: Even among Paralympians, there's no real agreement. There's lots of discussions, but no real agreement on what a reformatted Olympic and Paralympic games might look like. You know, there's a large contingent of athletes who would like to see Paralympics run first before the Olympics, and the main argument there is that people with disability are typically an afterthought. They're not prioritized in our society. And so by moving Paralympics to the front of the games’ timeline we remedy that prioritization problem and hopefully provide media attention to the Paralympians by using that as a teaser for the Olympics. Paralympians joke that the Olympics are a test event for us. So in some ways, [laughs] you know, maybe it's okay the way it is.
There's a second group of athletes who would like to see Paralympics stand alone, continue to stand alone as its own event separate from the Olympic games. For that group of athletes, the evidence of equity and social progress is the day when Paralympics as its own standalone event is as big a deal as the Olympics. And then there's a third group of athletes who would just like to be folded into the Olympics. And the reason for that is actually really simple, and it's that, yeah, we all have disabilities, but we don't move through the world thinking, man, I have a disability. We move through the world as athletes. We think of ourselves as athletes, as Olympians.
We behave like Olympians. We have the mental skills of Olympians. We have the physiological advantages of Olympians. What we do is parallel to the Olympics. So for that group of athletes, inclusion means inclusion, not separation. So, even among the Paralympic community, you're not going to find one perspective on what's the right way to merge these two international sporting events.
Jessica: All right, Lindsay, can you tell us a little bit about the impact on media coverage, with the fact that the Paralympics takes place a few weeks after the Olympics?
Lindsay: Yeah, I mean, I always just think about the logistics of journalism [laughs] and just getting all those cameras out to Tokyo, all those reporters out to Tokyo. It’s already such a big endeavor for the Olympics themselves. And you know, of the benefits of having those reporters, having the Paralympics go on at the same time, or a lot closer to the same time than a full two weeks later, so those journalists can stay. And we've seen it help women's sports. We see it at the Olympics, we've seen it in tennis grand slams. When the media is there already, they end up going more for the best story of the day, right?
Because the logistics are taken care of, right? The good equipment's there, the best reporters are there. I mean, you'd have to be pretty wealthy as a media company to be able to send reporters back to Tokyo or to wherever a few weeks later. So, you know, I know there are logistical challenges, but for media I think it would be a big boost for the Paralympics if they were going on more concurrently with the Olympics.
Amira: Not to mention like as viewers, right? Like other sports in the Olympics who aren't as popular as track or swimming at 4:00am, you know, all of a sudden you'll see a taekwondo trending, or sports climbing. And I think that there's the similar argument for just more eyeballs. But the other thing I couldn't stop thinking about was COVID. I mean, for a million different reasons, but also the fact that the para games are happening after the Olympic games means that the COVID situation is already bad. That was escalated by the Olympic games. And just this week, Japan's top COVID advisor talked about how it's so much worse now than it was 17 days ago when the Olympic games were being held. And at the time of recording, the first COVID case in the Paralympic village was just reported, and there's already been 40 linked cases to the para games. So, the fact that they had the Olympic games in a place that was already in a state of emergency, made it demonstrably worse, and then two weeks later moved an entire other para Olympic games into a worsening situation–
Lindsay: And some of these athletes are more vulnerable! Like, they've got muscular dystrophy and cerebral palsy, and just, you know, they're more vulnerable populations too, to these viruses, which is just so scary!
Jessica: Yeah. And like the Olympics, the Paralympics lay bare the disparities between nation states – things that we love to talk about on this show. One example that will be familiar to our listeners is team refugee. What does that look like in the Paralympics, Bren?
Brenda: Well, it's smaller, obviously. And the qualifying is a little bit more complicated because of funding and resources in those places. But it also is perhaps more impactful in the sense that it's a smaller scale, it's a smaller team. And so there are places where, you know, like Argentina, instead of a very big delegation, it's a smaller delegation. There's more attention to it. And those athletes – and we know on the show, they shouldn't be required to do this – but they are out there explaining the ways in which their countries really need to adopt new types of policies and infrastructure to help them. And so I would say, you know, it's just as important as the regular team refugee. They sometimes are refugees because of the conditions that are so poor for living in those countries with a disability. So whatever the civil unrest may be in their country, made X times worse by their special need.
Jessica: Hmm. Gosh, that's so that's so interesting. Amira, talk to us about tech and how that functions at the Paralympics.
Amira: Yeah, absolutely. So tech and tech and sports and tech innovations in sports is really important to the development of a lot of these sports, whether it's prosthetic legs that bend at certain angles or don't rust during certain elements. You know, there are certain prosthetic legs that do better, that are made like saltwater-proof versus ones that are for lifting. I was over at Arizona State University where there's a lot of money tied up in coming up with the technology that helps continue to get access to sport. So you can already layer that on in terms of what we know about developing nations and tech budgets–
Jessica: Who has access.
Amira: And who has access to things in terms of how that then impacts what your wheelchairs are made out of and what prosthetics you have availability to. And I think that that's something sometimes when we're looking at other sports, when you just need a ball, right? And we're talking about a series of events here that a lot of them rely on many tech innovations that have progressed, and they're pacing very fast. You heard Tatyana McFadden talk about how impactful Team Toyota has been. Part of that is not just direct sponsorship, but it is actual investment in tech developments. But what does that look like if certain nation states are far outpacing technological development because of accessibility?
Jessica: Now we're going to do a not Burn It All Down thing and actually have some fun.
Amira: WE ALWAYS HAVE FUN! [laughter]
Lindsay: Whoa, that was aggressive! [laughter]
Amira: Aggressive fun!
Lindsay: WE’RE FUN! [laughter]
Jessica: We have to start with the tensions and work our way through that.
Amira: Burn It All Down: Home For Aggressive Fun. [laughter]
Jessica: Here we go…
Brenda: Like a phoenix from the ashes…Fun. [laughter]
Jessica: This year, the Paralympics are 539 events across 22 sports. Here are a few that we are looking forward to. We've broken these down into totally arbitrary categories, but we're all going to just go with it. So go with us. First up: speed. Bren, tell us about para canoeing.
Brenda: As with my last review of canoeing at the Olympics, I’m sorry to inform all of you it's a kayak. [laughter] They're not the same! It was added in 2010 and debuted in Rio, 2016. It's a three tier format. It depends on the athlete's abilities in their trunk and legs. There are six different events, three for women and three for men – again, dependent upon the level of mobility in that trunk and leg. All the races are 200 meters and the events then are divided into two different boat type – [whispers] both of which are kayaks. Great Britain dominated the first outings in this, but also medaling: Australia, Brazil and Ukraine.
Who to look for this time around: Curtis McGrath of Australia is favored in the men’s, and for women, Shakhnoza Mirzaeva of Uzbekistan is the one to watch. In VL2: Emma Wiggs is going to look to return to gold, and she's one of those British stars from the past couple of times. She is a two sport athlete who also competed in 2012 for Great Britain in sitting volleyball. So, these people are pretty talented. [laughs]
Jessica: That’s too much, too much! [laughs] Too ambitious. I don't know how many people know this – maybe everyone, I don't know – but I was a very, very amateur and rather slow triathlete for a few years in my 20s–
Lindsay: I didn’t know that!
Brenda: Whaaat!
Jessica: And I just want to say it is incredibly hard–
Amira: NONE OF US KNEW THAT! What are you talking about!
Brenda: Same!
Amira: …Well, no, I think I did know that–
Lindsay: How has this never come up!? [laughs]
Jessica: I don’t know! I have no idea. But I'm here to say, it is so hard. So you swim and then you bike and you run. This is the second time they're going to do the triathlon at the Paralympics. The athletes are going to swim 750 meters, which is roughly half a mile, but is so far to swim, y'all. They bike 20 kilometers and then they run a 5k. According to Paralympics Australia, the paratriathlon is open to athletes with a physical or vision impairment. And depending on an athlete's classification, they may use a hand cycle and track chair, a tandem bike, and a sighted guide or standard equipment. Some athletes may require the use of leg or arm prosthetics, but adaptive equipment is not permitted during the swim.
Team Australia has a reason to be excited: Lauren Parker is the big name to watch in the PTWC category, which refers to the wheelchair users. On the men's side, Dutch PTWC competitor Jetze Plat is, according to the Paralympic Games video about the paratriathlon in Tokyo, arguably the greatest paratriathlete ever, and he'll be competing. It will take place on Saturday, August 28th and on Sunday, August 29th. Lindsay, I have here goalball. You are about to teach me something I don't know anything about.
Lindsay: Well, buckle up, Jess! [laughs] So this was invented in 1946 to actually help rehabilitate veterans who had lost their sight during the second World War, a little history there. It's for vision impaired athletes. Players are either partially sighted or totally blind, but they all wear eye shades so that they're all at the same level. It's two 12 minute halves. The participants are in teams of three and they're essentially on a volleyball court, but there's not a net in the middle and instead the goals are on either end and they stretch the entire width of the floor. And you have three athletes on each team at a time, and there are three subs. The basic premise is just to score goals quickly by precisely throwing the ball and defending shots from the other team.
You use your entire body to stop the ball. You throw yourself on the court in the right position. The floor is not cushioned. There is no face protection. It's super intense, mentally and physically. And it's really fast paced – after a ball is thrown, the defending players have 10 seconds to throw the ball back after one of them touches it. So, the goalball court is marked with raised lines so that the players can feel their location at any time. And there's also a sound in the ball and the audience has to be quiet during play so that they can hear the ball. So, it's really big on just kind of your hand coordination and like your instincts, but it looks a lot like dodgeball to me because the net is the whole court, and it's just so fast paced. So, I love it now.
Jessica: Wow. Well, I'm very excited about something I just learned about. That sounds amazing. So, track and field is huge at the Paralympics. In fact, it's the largest sport within the Paralympic movement. It's been a part of the game since the very beginning in 1960, and the rules are almost exactly the same between the track and field events at the Olympics and the Paralympics. You don't actually need me to explain anything to you if you're already familiar with them. According to Team USA, Paralympic track and field competition is open to athletes with physical disabilities, such as dwarfism, amputation, limb loss, blindness, visual impairment, spinal cord injury, wheelchair users, cerebral palsy, brain injury, stroke. My one highlight here is blind and visually impaired runners. They often compete with a guide runner who is a sighted person, and the two are attached at the wrist with a tether. The guide can call out obstacles and let the person know how far they have to go.
I want to say, not all runners with visual impairment need a guide, but for those with guides, I just think it's such a cool collaborative sport that you only get at the Paralympics. And then in researching this, the last thing – for the long jump in the same category, T11, competitors wear those eye shades, blindfolds like Lindsay was talking about. They have to make sure that the entire audience, that everyone is silent, because the athletes on their own sprint down the runway, and they are guided only by their muscle memory and the voices or claps of their guides who stand near the sand. That's fucking incredible. All right. Our next category is power. Amira, tell us about wheelchair rugby.
Amira: I will gladly, and this is a sport that I love, not only because while it's called wheelchair rugby, officially its original name was “murder ball.”
Lindsay: Murder ball!
Amira: Yes. Murder ball, because it is very fucking intense. Wheelchair rugby is a combination of rugby, handball, and basketball. It is played five a side, and I can't tell you all the specifics because I can't tell you that about rugby, [Lindsay laughs] but what I can tell you is that it's played– [laughter] But I can tell you that it's played on indoor hard courts about the length of a basketball court. This is a sport for quadriplegics, and one of the reasons why it was an offshoot of wheelchair basketball was because wheelchair basketball was very hard to participate in if you didn't have use of your upper limbs. And so one of the reasons this sport got very popular was because it allowed people with various limb losses and complete quadriplegic-ness to also participate. And basically everybody gets a point classification between 0.5 and 3.5, depending on impairment. And you cannot field's a team with points greater than 8. And so the other thing to note about this is this a mixed gender sport. So you will see men and women competing in wheelchair rugby together.
Lastly, I just want to tell you a few people to watch out for. Chuck Aoki from the United States, Carlos Neme from Colombia, and my favorite: Maia Amai-Marshall from New Zealand who has long been the only woman on the New Zealand team but is an absolute badass and you should check her out. The last Olympic wheelchair rugby games ended in an absolute nail-biter. The United States lost to Australia in a 59-58 double overtime game. And so the competition between Australia, United States, as well as Japan, Canada, and New Zealand is sure to be steep. And if you're looking for me during the Paralympic games, I will be watching murder ball.
Jessica: I love it. Brenda, tell us about football five-a-side.
Brenda: Well, I'm going to feature a little bit about football five-a-side, but just suffice it to say here, it's some real bullshit that there's no women's or mixed gender football in Paralympics. It's some real, real bullshit. So I just don't think we can get through Burn It All Down without being like, grr. Grr! It's a male only tournament.
Jessica: That’s terrible.
Brenda: Yeah, no reasons. No justification.
Jessica: Oh, there's not even a justification?
Brenda: No, no, no. It's visually impaired, and it is just some bullshit. Just…Yeah, just sexism, nothing complicated.
Jessica: Just sexism. [laughs]
Brenda: After that, it's pretty cool. And let me tell you, one thing that everybody hates about football isn't an issue here, which is the offside rules. So yay, [Jessica laughs] for those of you that complain all about the offside rules. There aren't any. It’s played in a cage, it's for the visually impaired, and so it doesn't go out of bounds. That means it's like flowing and fast, which is really nice, versus like stop, stop, or trying to like ricochet off the other player's body to move it up the line, you know? Which can get a little bit frustrating for audience members. Brazil has never lost a match, and their main competition is Argentina. So–
Jessica: It's your sport.
Brenda: No surprise. [laughter] Morocco is Africa's only representative, and they did really well, almost stopping Brazil last go around in 2016 in Rio. So they are really hoping to medal. There's a lot of ingenuity in the ways in which these players learned how to become experts at this game. And there's a lot of different audio signals. The Moroccan captain, for example, explained how all the kids in his school filled up the soccer ball with gravel so that he could hear it and play with them. Many of these players have played on integrated teams their whole life. They're amazing. I mean, the tackling is really exciting. You’ll be surprised. There's also sometimes called a “sin bin” if you get a yellow card… [laughs] It's totally fun. There's a ton of variation.
Jessica: If you get a yellow card, you go into the sin bin? Is that what you're saying? [Brenda laughs]
Amira: Like hell?
Brenda: But not in Olympics play! But it regular play. [Amira laughs]
Jessica: Okay. So I won't see it at the Paralympics, is what you're saying. Not the sin bin.
Brenda: The sport has many variations, deep history besides the Olympics that I just will give you briefly. The group A, group B. Group A, you have Brazil, Japan, France, China; and group B, Argentina, Morocco, Spain, and Thailand. I think most people think that this is really a bronze medal match after Argentina and Brazil, but we shall see!
Jessica: This all sounds so amazing. So, the Olympics has weightlifting, the Paralympics have powerlifting, which is…That’s my thing. So instead of the snatch or the jerk and putting the weight above your head, powerlifters bench press. So they unrack, lower the bar to their chest, they have to hold it motionless on their chest – which I assume is to kill the momentum, because when you're doing the bench press, you absolutely use that momentum to get it back up. So they pause on their chest and then they press it upwards all the way and lock their elbows. They get three attempts, and the winner is the athlete with the most kilograms on the bar. Para powerlifters commonly bench more than three times their body weight. It's open to athletes with eight eligible physical impairments, and they compete in one sport class across 10 different weight categories per gender.
But the big news out of Tokyo: para powerlifting will have an equal number of female and male athletes competing at the Paralympic games for the very first time. There are 180 para powerlifters – 90 are men, 90 are women. This sport will also have the same number of men and women officiating. Cyprus, t he Dominican Republic, Panama and Singapore will be making their para powerlifting debuts at these Paralympic games. Para powerlifting will run for five days. It starts on August 26th and it runs through August 30th. Amira, tell me about para taekwondo.
Amira: Yeah, para taekwondo is very exciting. It is making its debut at the 2020 games. This has been a long road from the international para taekwondo federation to get both the sparring form and the poomsae form – like, the competition when you do the forms – into international competition at the Olympic games. At this games, what you'll see in terms of sparring is a classification system that is divided up by weight and gender, and then also by limb ability. Then from there it's a single elimination tournament, and basically it is a series of competitions. But it's scored a little bit differently from the other international competitions in that you can score points for hitting the trunk and hitting the head in appropriate sparring technique. Whereas a lot of other world para taekwondo competitions do not award points for that. So it's actually opening up more possibilities for scoring points. Also, para taekwondo is one of the biggest kind of diversities of nation states represented. As an individual sport, we can see how fighting is one of these things that is more accessible.
So some of the athletes to watch: Bolor-Erdene Ganbat from Mongolia is world number one and he was considered unbeatable for a very long time, three straight world titles, but has lost three of his last five competitions. So, I think a lot of people are watching to see if he gets back to form or if new folks are coming. Some of the folks coming up include Mahdi Pourrahnama from Iran – even though he's just 23, he's also considered a veteran of the sport. He has been competing since he was 13 years old. But the Paralympic gold has alluded him. The other last two people that I want you to watch for is Meryem Betul Cavdar from Turkey, world number two right now, as well as Claudia Romero from Mexico, who is a young competitor at just 18, but somebody absolutely to keep your eye on.
Jessica: Awesome. And our final category: finesse. Lindsay, para badminton.
Lindsay: Yes. It, like taekwondo, is making its Olympic debut. The rules are basically the same as the able-bodied version of badminton, so I'm not going to get into that. You know, we can figure it out. [laughs]
Amira: In short, Lindsay also does not know the rules to Olympic badminton. [laughs]
Lindsay: I’ve got it in front of me, but I want to focus on some other things. So, the athletes are placed in the six sport classes. There are two wheelchair classes and four standing classes. There's a lot of controversy in this Olympic debut for the sport. So, in all six events, men's have a single…The women's don't have singles competition in the SL3 or SH6 categories, meaning one of the best players in the world, Manasi Joshi from India, who was on the Time magazine cover last year, literally had a Barbie doll made after her, was gonna be a star of this games, but she was unable to qualify.
Jessica: Oh no…
Lindsay: She tried to qualify through the mixed doubles stuff, but it did not work out. And so she doesn't get to compete because of sexism and corruption! So, you know, the para sports have just as much bullshit and power struggles and annoying shit as not para sports, unfortunately! But one cool thing is that the competition wheelchairs, we were talking about tech earlier, they incorporate so many modifications to aid the player. So there's a low back rest so it doesn't interfere with the players movement. And there's also like extra caster wheels so that it keeps it from being overturned when the player reaches back to hit the shuttlecock, which is of course the thing that you play with in badminton.
Brenda: The birdie. [laughter]
Lindsay: So, I’m very excited.
Amira: The thing you play with, yes.
Jessica: Amira, please tell us about sitting volleyball.
Amira: Yes! Sitting volleyball is much like standing volleyball, which we should start really calling standing volleyball. Anyways, it's played on a similar sized court. It's played with six players. The net is lower and, as its name indicates, you are sitting. Being unable to stand has no bearing on being able to participate, and this sport is as popular with amputees, people who have spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy, or brain impairments from a stroke or something like that. Athletes are given a classification as disabled or MD, minimally disabled, and each team can only field a roster with two MD players and only one on the court at the same time. Other than that, it's very much like the rules of standing volleyball. There will be eight teams of men and eight teams of women competing in the games. It took a long time for the women to get a chance to have this at the Paralympic games. The men's game was introduced in the 1980s, and the women didn't compete at sitting volleyball until 2004, I believe.
Volleyball is absolutely my jam, so I'm looking forward to that competition. And on the women's side: Russia, the United States and China have been kind of vying for dominance in the sport, as well as the Netherlands who have been very, very dominant at the Paralympic games. At the men's side, you actually have Ukraine, Iran and Bosnia-Herzegovina. And so we will be watching at the Paralympic games to see who comes out on top in sitting volleyball.
Jessica: Brenda, talk to me about wheelchair tennis.
Brenda: So, a lot like five-a-side football, wheelchair tennis has a really thriving competition schedule outside of the Olympics. But this Paralympics, a total of 104 tennis players from 31 nations will compete in six different medal events. The sport originated in California in 1976 and was sort of officially inaugurated at the helm of acrobatic skier, Brad Parks, who was paralyzed in a skiing accident. The rules are totally the same apart from you get two bounces with a ball instead of just one. Besides that, dimensions, net, everything else is the same. Australia's Dylan Alcott is the most dominant player. Men and women compete together in singles and doubles.
Jessica: Huh. Awesome.
Brenda: Pretty neat.
Jessica: All right, Lindsay. Boccia.
Lindsay: Boccia, yes! I am so excited we are ending with this, because I had no idea what it was. [Jessica laughs] So, boccia is basically…It reminds me a lot of curling. I mean, there's not actually like ice and brooms, but you'll get it in a minute. So it's all about placement and push. It's a sport that was initially just for athletes with cerebral palsy, but now it includes athletes who have any type of neurological impairment that impacts their motor function. Just like goalball, this is one of the two sports where there's no Olympic counterpart. It's played on a flat, smooth surface where players must throw or roll colored balls as close as possible to a white target ball, which is known as the jack. And then the player pair or team with the most balls near the jack is the winner!
So, there are four different classes. Some athletes are able, like, the athletes that are able to throw the balls, they're in one class. And whereas in some classes athletes need an assistant, like, they literally have a ramp and a pointer in their mouth or in their chin that they use to push the ball down the ramp to try and angle it. But essentially you can target and try and just get your ball close to the white ball. You can also then hit the other team's ball away from the white ball with your ball, or you can try and get your ball closer to the white ball.
Jessica: Like curling.
Lindsay: Like in curling! So it's dramatic until the end, and it's very strategy-based. This is not divided by gender. It's a mixed gender event. There are some doubles teams and singles events and it's really fun and really different than any other sport. I really encourage everyone to check it out. Boccia!
Jessica: Boccia! All right. And now for some athletes to follow. Bren, get us started.
Brenda: Okay. Keeping on my wheelchair tennis deep dive, Yui Kamiji, who is a Japanese wheelchair tennis player who's looking to be the first non-Dutch gold medalist in women's events, and she has been on the heels of Netherlands’ Diede de Groot for a couple of years. She's from Akashi, Japan. So it could be a great story, and it's already been a great rivalry.
She won bronze in 2016, was really disappointed. Kamiji also competes in doubles with her friend, Jordanne Whiley of Great Britain, and the pair won a grand slam back in 2014. So, she's been around a while. I also don't know why this cracks me up, but she really, really likes chicken nuggets. And it's in many, many articles. [laughs]
Jessica: It shows up all the time? [laughs]
Brenda: Her and her doubles partner, like, that's what they do at two in the morning after their competitions end, is they go and get chicken nuggets. So go get all those sponsorship dollars and make the Japanese happy with your badass self there. I am really excited.
Jessica: I love it. So, Monica Sereda is a 54 year old US cyclist and it's her first Paralympics. And you know how we love the older athletes around here! [Brenda laughs] She races in the WT2 class, which is for athletes with moderate loss of stability and function. So she rides a trike. She's 54 and she's only been racing internationally for four years, since 2017. In 2018, she had a bad accident while riding that required surgery and rehab. But now she's ready to go in Tokyo! There is one hitch: Sereda's service dog, Biscuit, cannot make the 7,200 mile trip to Tokyo. Hopefully that's not going to affect her too much, but that is tough. One last thing about her: Sereda is representing for LGBTQ+ athletes. Her girlfriend, Sam will be cheering her on at home. Lindsay?
Lindsay: On the other end of the age spectrum, we have Anastasia Pagonis, a 17 year old American swimmer who will be competing in the 400 meter freestyle and the 100 meter freestyle in the S11 category, which is for swimmers with near total visual impairment. All in this category have to swim in blacked-out goggles, and there are head tappers to like tap them with a stick to tell them when to turn. She has a TikTok, which you all need to follow. The link is in the show notes. It's fantastic. Her guide dog's name is Radar, which is just like my favorite guide dog name ever! [laughs] And at the US Olympic trials in the prelims she shattered the 400 free record for her category by 12 seconds!
Jessica: Oh my gosh!
Lindsay: She shattered the world record by 12 seconds in the prelims and then lowered it by another three seconds in the finals. So, I think she might do pretty well! [laughs]
Jessica: Wow. Wow. All right, Amira?
Amira: Yeah, I have to start off with Deja Young. Deja is a Gemini from Dallas, Texas! [Jessica laughs] I love this. She's like Black girl magic. I adore her. She's 24 and she's looking to defend her gold in the 100 and 200 hundred meter events at the T46 classification in track and field. Deja was born with shoulder nerve damage when a doctor pulled too hard when she was being born and then failed to tell her family at all. So they didn't notice for many months. And she talks about this openly, because one of the things Deja is talking about a lot, in line with many people this year, is mental health. And she has shared and been very public about how the months leading up to her Paralympic debut at Rio she actually attempted suicide because the depression had really gotten to her. She was not in a good place. And so part of what she's talking about is mental health awareness and resiliency.
Deja competed in track all through high school, set records, was running 12th in the 200 meter in Texas. And that was the first time that she realized that there was resistance to her running in college because recruiters started talking about the way that she ran because of her shoulder. And she did earn a scholarship to Wichita State, which is the first time she had heard about the para games, and she switched over to Paralympic and para world competition. So, Deja has certainly had a journey and she's looking to repeat, but I think she's looking to also use her platform to educate and bring awareness to all the forms of depression and mental health and the way it impacts the sport. And, you know, join the many athletes putting on for Texas.
Jessica: Brenda?
Brenda: So, I'd like to focus for a second on Mohammad Abbas Karimi. He is an Afghan para swimmer, born without arms in Kabul, Afghanistan. He is actually not representing Afghanistan because at 16 he fled. He is a member of the Hazara ethnic group that has been in conflict with the Taliban since the withdrawal of the Soviet Union in 1989. He then flew at 16 to Iran, paid smugglers to take him across the border into Turkey, spent four years there without documentation. During this time he was contacted by a former wrestling coach, Mike Ives, who had started helping refugee athletes. There's many of these that we've seen that have had this kind of pipeline. And in the end, with the help of the UN high commissioner for refugees, he ended up finding a home in Fort Lauderdale.
So, I don't really care how well he does other than I'm sure he cares how well he does. [laughs] But I also think right now he's such a like symbol of perseverance, and I hate to be inspired, but like, how can you not be by this person who's just plugged away and plugged away to build the life that he wants and has expressed how happy and proud of himself he is and how he wants to bring hope to refugees around the world. He was in various refugee camps. He knows what it's like for people with disabilities. He's just fucking awesome. So I hope he wins. He swims like a dolphin. He looks amazing. He's graceful. He's cool. Check him out.
Jessica: That's amazing. Two Grenadian athletes are making history as the first Paralympians from Grenada, a small Caribbean nation that's home to just over 100,000 people. Ishona Stacy-Ann Charles is in the women's javelin. Charles was the first ever Grenada para athlete to compete internationally when she competed in Arizona in 2018 – she won a gold medal that time. She went back to the same competition earlier this year and won a silver. Very excited to see her with the javelin. And Nyè Cruickshank in swimming: Cruickshank only made her international debut earlier this year at the world para swimming world series in Lewisville, Texas. Grenada has only had a Paralympics committee since 2015, so this is just very exciting for them to be sending these two athletes to Tokyo. Lindsay?
Lindsay: Yeah. I want to talk about Courtney Ryan, a 31 year old women's wheelchair basketball player for Team USA. She's from San Diego, California. She was an all American soccer player in college when, in the middle of the game, a blood clot burst and paralyzed her from the waist down. She ended up discovering wheelchair basketball. There’s this great video that she did for the It Gets Better Project, and apparently while watching it, my notes were, “has a gay sister, she’s gay, too…lesbian.” So those are my notes about her! [laughs] I was very…The story was great! Video's great.
But I really love her because…Not just because of all the gayness, but when she was talking about wheelchair basketball she says, like, people look at people in a wheelchair and think, oh, they're a fragile inspiration, but she really loved how wheelchair basketball…Like, the physicality of it, the fact that the wheelchairs were knocking over, the fact that it's just so intense. And she's also an assistant coach at her alma mater at Arizona, and co-founded the Team PossAbilities Shield Maidens women's wheelchair basketball team in Los Angeles.
Jessica: Dang. All right. Amira?
Amira: Yeah. Scout Bassett, who is my Peloton friend–
Lindsay: I THOUGHT WE WERE GOING TO GET THROUGH–!
Jessica: She did it!
Lindsay: I thought we were going to get through–! [laughs]
Jessica: She found a way!
Amira: So, Scout Bassett is on Peloton, but that's actually not where I first heard of Scout. I first heard of Scout during one of the ESPN body issues where she talked about her reluctance to do it, but how disabled bodies are always kind of pushed to the back and not needing to be seen. She was anxious because she has scars and is missing a leg, but felt really empowered by being seen and not receding to the shadows, which I think is really the story around Scout in all that she does. So, she's a returning Paralympian. She just missed out on the medal stands and Rio and will be looking to try to make it there in both the 100 meters and the long jump at the 2020 games.
She's also used her platform to not only talk about mental health, but increasingly about Asian-American representation in sports, particularly because of the rise of anti Asian-American hate crimes happening in the United States over the last year. She's become very vocal in that with Instagram posts and statuses that say, “I wish America loved Asian people as much as they love our food,” et cetera. But one of the other things I wanted to note is that she used this time off to adjust her prosthetic. We have talked about the kind of pros and cons of the breaks caused by the pandemic, and one of the things that Scout has used the pandemic delay to do is actually switch prosthetics.
It requires a lot of change, because the one she's running with now requires her to front load her weight more, and her residual limb has scar tissue that's really sensitive, and it pushes into her femur and it grinds every time she plants and runs. And so it's not just going to a store and swapping out a prosthetic, it’s getting used to it and figuring out how your limb fits and dealing with the pain and kind of breaking it in. And so the time that she's taken because the pandemic has allowed her to readjust to a new prosthetic that she will be using in 2021. Oh, dammit! Sorry. And also she's a transracial adoptee. Woo woo! Represent. We're very cool.
Jessica: Brenda.
Brenda: I want to focus on an athlete that should be in the Paralympics, but that unfortunately we won't see: Zakia Khudadadi, who was scheduled to be Afghanistan's para athlete in taekwondo. It's being reported all over that she would have been the first woman para athlete from Afghanistan, but I did a little digging and I don't think we should ignore the 2004 Paralympic Sydney track athlete Mareena Karim, who actually was the first to represent Afghanistan in the Paralympics. I'm not sure how this is getting lost, except to tell you it's part of the bullshit of ignoring these games that makes it so hard to research. So, not really coming down on anyone too hard here, but did want to recognize that.
As well as Hussein Rasuli, who is a track athlete and he was also supposed to compete there. Their airports have been shut down and they have been unable up until this point to safely find their way to Tokyo. It's really sad when you see this. I can't imagine this happening. Right before, Zakia did record a plea to people to try to help them to get there. And you know, maybe it will still happen. I would like to just say that the IOC in all of its ridiculousness doesn't seem to be doing anything. So, predictable bullshit, you know. If you're worried so much about Afghani women, do something. But I do want to keep hammering away at the fact that we should be seeing them.
Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. Kelly van Zon is a Dutch table tennis star, who is in class seven, which means she's an athlete with a severe impairment of the legs or the playing arm, but less severe than those described in class six. She is a two time Paralympic champion. She won gold in both London and Rio. She's been playing on the international scene for nearly 20 years, since 2002, but she hasn't played an international match since 2020. So it's been a long time for her at this point. I love this factoid about van Zon from the International Paralympic Committee’s write up about her preparation for Tokyo: “Van Zon rose to fame during the Rio 2016 games when she played a miracle diving shot around the table in her group game against Turkey's Kubra Korkut, who she went on to defeat in the gold medal match.” She is seriously one to watch in table tennis. And you know, I'd say don't count her out for another miracle diving shot. We'd love to see it. Lindsay?
Lindsay: Just a quick shoutout to Shae Graham, an Australia wheelchair rugby player. She is one of the few women that we will see competing alongside the men in wheelchair rugby, because while it is mixed gender, most of the teams are all men. It's very rare for a woman to be in there. I don't know much about her. Once again, researching is hard. But I do know that she works as a librarian at night. So she is a trailblazing, glass-ceiling-shattering wheelchair rugby player by day, and then a librarian who loves Harry Potter by night. She's 34 years old. This will be her Paralympic debut. I think it's cool to see these women compete in such a physical sport alongside guys. Like, you just don't get to see that enough.
Jessica: Yeah. If any romance novelists are listening, I would really like a romance novel based on her. Thank you very much!
Lindsay: Well, I would just like to say, Friday Night Lights had a whole wheelchair rugby storyline, if you don't remember–
Brenda: Or maybe that's what you will do next, Jessica, is write that.
Jessica: Not me!
Amira: I mean, hello. Speaking of romance, one half of my favorite couple, Hunter Woodhall, is competing at the Paralympic games. Obviously his girlfriend, Tara Davis, just competed at the Olympics in long jump. And I will say this again: if you haven't done it yet, go watch their YouTube channel, please. They are ridiculously cute.
Jessica: Yeah. Amira, wrap us up.
Amira: But I do want to bring you to Cuba and talk about Omara Durand, who is also known as a queen of speed. Why, you ask? That's because she has literally literally never lost an international competition. I'm serious. Golds for days. Golds at the Paralympic games, at the world championships at the Parapan games. You might've remembered in Rio she did the triple gold medal in the T12 classification in the 100, 200, and 400 meters. That’s, yes, an Olympic gold hat trick. When she started to compete, she competed at the T13 level. She took some time off to have a baby. She has a daughter. She came back from maternity leave. But her sight deteriorated worse during her pregnancy. So she actually moved classifications to a T12, which is for more intense visual impairment. And that's where she did her triple gold medal in Rio.
She has not only got those golds, but she's done it in record breaking fashion. Seriously. When she first came back from maternity leave at the Tokyo Parapan games, she clocked 11.65 seconds in the rain during heats. Then two months later at world championships in Doha, she broke four world records. She broke a world record in each of her events and then lowered her world record to 11.4 seconds to win gold in the 100 meters. So, three gold medals at Doha, four world record breakings. In the Paralympic games, she broke records in the 200 each time she ran, and in the 400 she smashed the world record to 52.90 in the heats, and then in the championship run, smashed it again to 51.77!
Jessica: So she has all the gold medals, all the world records and all the top times!
Amira: All of them! When I tell you “queen of speed” is fitting, absolutely. She says sport has given her purpose, has made her not as shy anymore, has been the thing that saved her. Her relationship with her trainer and coach, she talks about a lot. She says she's like a mother to me. And the community around her, supporting her…Many Olympic and Paralympic athletes have said she's the pride and joy of Cuba. And I am just thrilled to watch her. And now I'm like, oh my god, she's never lost on the international level! So I'm feeling residual pressure! [laughter] Because this is how invested I am. So, queen of speed will be on the track in Tokyo here in the 2020 games in 2021.
Jessica: Well, catch the Paralympics from August 24th (today) to September 5th. The International Paralympic Committee will have coverage through the Olympic Broadcasting Services, OBS, delivering live feeds to various outlets globally. In the United States, watch via NBC, which has promised 1200 hours of coverage on the NBC sports network, the Olympic channel and streaming on nbcolympics.com and Peacock. There will be, for the first time ever, prime time coverage on NBC of the Paralympics. In the UK, Channel Four has the rights. In Australia, Seven Network. Fubo TV, Sling TV and Hulu TV offer online streaming options for the games as well. No matter where you live, check out your options for watching the Paralympics. And finally, check out all our continuing coverage of the Paralympics this week into next. On Thursday, Amira talks to Motoko Rich, the New York Times Tokyo bureau chief, about what is happening on the ground there. And again, we'll have continuing coverage in the coming days.
That's it for this episode of Burn It All Down. This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our web and social media wizard. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Follow Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Listen, subscribe and rate the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and Google Play. For show links and transcripts, check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com. You'll also find a link to our merch at our Bonfire store. And thank you to our patrons – your support means the world. If you want to become a sustaining donor to our show, visit patreon.com/burnitalldown. Burn on, and not out.