EHe wasn’t disabled, Philip Craven used to say, he was becoming disabled. For fifteen years the Englishman was President of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and for much, much longer he fought to recognize people for their talent and ability and not to define them by a handicap. He was determined and resourceful, charming, funny and persistent and, oh yeah, he was in a wheelchair when he was playing basketball.
Craven said goodbye to the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro 2016 – with the exclusion of the Russian team. Unlike the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Thomas Bach, the IPC and Craven decided that the great betrayal by Putin, Putin’s secret service and Putin’s sports organizations at Putin’s Sochi 2014 Winter Games could only have one consequence: the no to Putin’s team.
This Wednesday, the IPC, led by Brazilian Andrew Parsons, faces a decision to ban teams from Russia and Belarus from the Paralympics because of the war their home countries are waging against neighboring Ukraine. Or let them play along. Supposedly there is no legal basis to exclude them two days before the opening. Alternatively, not flying their flag and not playing their anthems are being considered.
The question of whether someone who is already at a sporting, social and personal disadvantage as a result of a physical disability can be punished does not arise. The charging of the Olympics and the Paralympics with national and state symbols puts the participants at the service of the states that sent them, in this case the warmongering Russia and its henchman Belarus.
The claim of disabled sports to the same participation as Olympic athletes would make any leniency based on a disability appear as an act of condescension, like crouching down to talk to wheelchair users or even pushing the wheelchair without being asked. Last but not least, athletes from Ukraine, whether disabled or not, cannot be expected to compete with those whose national insignia are also emblazoned on the tanks, howitzers and bombers that are reducing their cities to rubble and killing their families . “We knew that if we tolerated what happened in Russia in the slightest – then we would be finished, dead,” Craven said in a 2016 interview with the FAZ. The same applies to what is happening in Ukraine now.
