What this former Para athlete hopes to see from the Paris Paralympics coverage

After a grand spectacle at Place de la Concorde, the 2024 Paralympic Games are now officially underway.

The opening ceremony featured a parade of athletes down the famed Champs-Elysees avenue, and elaborate performances like the one by French singer Lucky Love with an accompanying chorus of dancers in wheelchairs.

Today on Commotion, former Para athlete and current journalist John Loeppky tells host Elamin Abdelmahmoud about his favourite moments from yesterday's opening ceremony, and why he hopes the athletes competing in this year's games don't get described as "inspiring."

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: What was the highlight for you watching those opening ceremonies?

John: My favorite part of the opening ceremony, as a former Para athlete who now plies his trade as a journalist, is definitely seeing the breadth of the Paralympic movement. I love when you see a delegation come in and they say, "There's one athlete, and this is the first time that this country is here."

And then the willingness of the Paralympic movement to talk about barriers in particular countries for disabled folks, because it can be really easy to think through the Paralympics in the context of the country that we live in. Certainly there are barriers here, but looking at even something as simple as the equipment that folks are rolling, walking and otherwise ambulating in on and seeing the disparities there, was one of the more interesting parts of the opening ceremony to me.

Elamin: I'm glad you brought that up…. I would say my favorite part of the opening ceremonies were all of these sort of sweeping dance numbers. I was like, my eyes don't even know what to focus on because it was like this giant, elaborate display.

The goal of these ceremonies was to challenge our perceptions of people with disabilities. Did they land the mission, in watching that opening ceremony?

John: I think so. I mean, I think it's always a pebble thrown into an ocean in a way, and you just hope that the pebbles mount up. But I certainly think these moments really do challenge what disabled bodies can do, and look like and be. I think it certainly sparks conversation not just in the sporting community, but also in the arts and culture community when you get to see disability art and culture put on display like that.

Elamin: John, that word ["inspiring"] comes up a lot in the Paralympics. I think it comes up a lot in the Olympics in general, but it comes up a little bit more in the Paralympics. You have a complicated relationship with the word "inspiring." What's the weariness with the word?

John: There's this term that we use sometimes called "inspiration porn." It was coined by Australian artist Stella Young. The point is if people were being inspiring for the fact that they are elite athletes in the same way that — I'm just picking a basketball player that was in the Olympics — LeBron is inspiring, or Jamal Murray is inspiring to the basketball players of Canada, that's one thing. But it's when the inspo turns into, "These athletes are so inspiring because they got out of bed." Or, "They're so inspiring because they overcame these barriers."

Sometimes when we talk about inspiration in the context of disability, it can feel like we're talking about some kind of transcendent moment, when really we're talking about athletes being elite at their sport. That's not to say that they don't have barriers to get there, and those stories are interesting. But when they dominate, we lose what is happening with the actual athletics a lot of time.

Elamin: OK, so the Paralympics just started. You've got a couple weeks of people watching the Paralympics. How would you like journalists and people who cover the Paralympics to talk about the games as they watch them?

John: I'd like folks to talk about the games as an elite sporting environment, and then figure out how disability intersects with that. So for example, we've seen pieces, including from CBC Sports, about classification. Some folks compare them to weight classes, in a way. The idea and the ideal is that athletes are in their divisions with people with the same amount of disability, or the word they often use is "impairment." Classification is a really interesting topic that we need to talk about…. How can we integrate that into coverage? How can we think about what the local context is of disabled athletes when they're here at home? How can we get beyond the, "So-and-so is a Paralympian because they are really good at this sport," but we lead with, "was in a car crash," or whatever. I want us to think about the sporting accomplishment first. Not that the disability can't come in; it's going to, naturally.

And then from a purely technical perspective, actually asking the athletes something like, "Do you prefer person-first or identity-first language? How do you see yourself within the broader disability rights movement, if that's where an interview goes?" Really, like we see with the Olympics, connecting social change to sport, because that's the stated goal of the Paralympics.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with John Loeppky produced by Jess Low.