i have assignment and quiz based on readings and short videos

Temple University - Fox School | STHM_0857_-_Disability_and_American_Sport-SD

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AUBREY KENT: Hi, I'm Aubrey Kent, and in this short video we're going to talk about disability in American

sport. We're going to talk about some of the key issues and some notable examples within

American sport that pertain to sport and the disabled. So first we have to define disability,

right? It refers to any intellectual or physical impairment. Many disabled sports are actually just

sports that able-bodied people participate in that have been adapted for the disabled

population, and so you might hear a lot of people talking about adapted sport, or adapted

physical activity, as well. Typically they're divided into three broad categories, which is deaf

sport, physically impaired sport, and intellectually impaired sport.

So how did this all emerge? Well, you know what? It's very popular, or at least, well known

now. However, disabled persons have been participating in sport for generations, centuries. In

an organized fashion in the late 1800s in Berlin, there were sport clubs for deaf athletes, for

example. But really it's been in the latter part of the 20th century that disabled sport has

become fairly prominent. Typically, Disabled Sports USA is the go-to source for information

within American sport.

You know, stereotypes, attitudes, assumptions, and perceptions of the able-bodied population

have for the longest time marginalized disabled persons, such that participation rates were

very, very low. Happily in American-- in America, pardon me, Disabled Sport USA has done a

great job of integrating more, and more, and more of the disabled population into getting the

benefits out of sport and physical activity participation. Sadly, that's not true around the world.

Right to Play is an organization that estimates that only 7% of disabled persons participate

regularly in physical activity or sport around the world. Their quality of life, therefore, is quite

low.

How it emerged in America as a prominent organization and an activity that was recognized

and funded was not due to the Paralympics, which-- but it was really in the post-World War II

era. The World War II era lead into Korea and Vietnam, and more and more American soldiers

were coming back with limbs missing and just various disabilities. One of the earliest pioneers

was Jim Winthers, a World War II veteran, who was a member of the 10th Mountain Division,

the Skiing 10th, they were known. So they were a crew of military who were operating in the

hills and the mountains on skis well, he lost a leg, and so he taught himself, based on some of

his European contacts, how to ski without legs. In 1967, he founded the National Amputee

Skiers Association with three chapters.

The influx of wounded from Vietnam throughout the '70s helped this organization to grow. One

of these participants was a guy named Kurt Bauer who's now the executive director of

Disabled Sports. It now has 91 chapters across 36 states. In 1946, post-World War II is

generally considered the birth year of wheelchair sports. As in the able-bodied population,

women lagged in this area. It wasn't until 1975 that the first women's wheelchair basketball

tournament was held. That's the same year that Bob Hall was the first wheelchair athlete to

participate in the Boston Marathon. As it became more widely known and more advocacy

groups emerged, one of the big events that happened was in 1985 when Rick Hansen, a

Canadian wheelchair athlete, embarked on his Marathon of Hope, a cross-country ride in his

wheelchair to raise money and awareness for disabled sport.

Now the two things that, when you hear disabled sport, you probably think about are the

Paralympic Games and the Special Olympics. The Paralympics really started in 1944. It says

1960 on the slide, but in 1994 at the request of the British government, Doctor Ludwig

Guttmann opened a spinal injuries clinic in Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Great Britain. And in

1948 at the opening ceremony of the London Olympic games he held a parallel wheelchair

games known as the Stoke Mandeville Games. These became the Paralympics. The first

Paralympics took place in Rome in 1960, featuring 400 athletes from 23 different countries.

The Special Olympics is a global movement that started right here in America by Eunice

Kennedy Shriver of the Kennedy family. She saw how unjustly and unfairly disabled athletes--

intellectually and physically, but especially intellectually-- were treated and marginalized in

society. So she started summer camps for these kids, and a lot of it was play and physical

activity. And throughout the 1960s she kept advocating and continuing her special work

through the presidency of her son and various committees, as her family was so involved in

government. So in 1968 the first Special Olympics were held at Soldier Field in Chicago. 1,000

people with intellectual disabilities participated from 26 states and Canada. This grew very

quickly. In 1971 it received official USOC sanction, and in 1977 they hosted the first Winter

Special Olympic Games. Now just recently, a couple of years ago in 2012, the Special Olympic

global reach was over four million participants worldwide.

The conversation now is over something called unified sports, which is this idea that if you

have the regular Olympic Games, followed by the Paralympic Games, followed fairly closely by

the Special Olympic Games, that's fantastic and they should be able to all succeed on their

own. However, the idea of unified sports is that we all should participate together. So we've

seen some of this. Some disabled athletes have participated in past Olympics, whether they

be blade sprinters or wheelchair marathoners. Going forward, the advocacy groups would talk

about unified sport becoming the norm, where intellectually, physically, and able-bodied

athletes compete side-by-side.

So we've quickly explained some key issues within the disabled world as it pertains to

American sport, and we've talked about some notable examples that we should be aware of.

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