Dear Editor,
The 30th Olympics in London are finished and the Paralympics will start on August 29, when about 5000 athletes with disabilities from 165 different countries will be taking part. The Paralympic movement was originally conceived by a doctor, Sir Ludwig Guttmann at London Stoke Mandeville Hospital during the Second World War. The President of the International Paralympic Committee, Sir Philip Craven states, “The fact that your legs don’t work doesn’t mean your brain and your heart don’t work. Let’s change perceptions once and for all.“
The mission of the Paralympics will be for Britain to lead the world in changing attitudes towards physical disability and for it to “be the new enlightenment for the 21st century.“ The stories of some of the athletes at the Paralympics are truly inspiring, such as the swimmer who lost a leg to a shark trying to save his brother, or the Rwandan volleyball team who lost limbs fighting on opposite sides in the country’s civil war. Disability is a matter of degree – some more obvious than others.
Guyana did not win any medals in the London Olympics, unlike some of the other Caribbean countries, notably Jamaica. As far as I know there are no Guyanese athletes taking part in the Paralympics so there will be no Olympic medals of any form for Guyana to celebrate as a nation. Having spent the two weeks in Guyana whilst the Olympics were taking place in London, my general observation is that there is a need to diversify the national sporting base for able and disabled sport persons. Without resorting to stereotypes, if more of an emphasis was placed on sports such as table tennis, volleyball and even equestrian activities (horse-jumping), there is no reason why Guyana cannot have a more diverse set of Olympians than the five who represented Guyana in London a month ago.
On a final political note, and in tribute to Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon who told the American Congress that “ideological differences fade in the presence of overpowering pride in what we do” – the Guyanese National Assembly should think about this and plan for the first Olympics in South America in 2012 in Brazil, and also the next Paralympics.
Yours faithfully,
Robert S Drepaul
