John Chidley Hill.com A blog about reading, writing, pop culture and sports.

12Mar/100

Paralympics off to a poor start before they can even begin

In the wake of the very successful Vancouver Olympics there’s a nice afterglow surrounding Canada’s amateur sports. Events like downhill skiing and curling are given more prominent airtime on television and commentators like ESPN’s Bill Simmons are still talking about the 2010 Games.

It’s little wonder. After all, Canada finally got the monkey off its back when Alex Bilodeau won a gold medal, the first time a Canadian has won the top prize on home soil. Canadians then went on to win 13 more gold medals, an Olympic record for the host nation of a winter games, culminating in a dramatic 3-2 overtime victory over Team USA in men’s hockey.

The closing ceremonies struck the right note as well. It was funny, charming and distinctly Canadian, provided you turned the TV off as soon as Nickleback took to the stage.

But all that goodwill is going to be wasted by tonight’s Paralympic Opening Ceremony which you will be able to watch.... nowhere. See, neither CTV or NBC are showing the ceremony live. Instead, they’re going to air the “hit” TV show, Medium, and run the tape of the ceremonies on Saturday.

I understand that the Paralympics don’t have all the glitz and glamour of National Hockey League players or the sex appeal of Lindsay Vonn or the Curlougar Cheryl Bernard, but surely they deserve to have their opening ceremonies live to air.

Can the demand for the latest and greatest episode of Medium really be that high?

To me, the Paralympics do way more to capture the spirit of the Olympics Movement. Their precursor was the Stoke Mandeville Games, organized by Dr. Ludwig Guttmann in 1948 during the London Olympic Games. Orginally, they were an exercise for British World War II veterans with spinal conditions. The hope was that the competition would motivate them to stay active despite their handicap.

The first official Paralympics were held after the 1960 Olympics in Rome with a broadened scope that included anyone with a physical disability or vision impairment. They focused on the participants’ athletic achievements and fitness for the physically disabled around the world.

That is what the Olympics should be all about – the triumph of the human spirit, creating new heroes that people around the world can admire for their determination and will power. It’s a real shame that CTV and NBC have forgotten that lesson just two weekends after the Olympics ended.