The opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games takes place in Rio tonight. It is an event that means more to the way we look on disability than any of one thousand reports into services and accessibility.
It is not as important in terms of getting things done but it is in the gut respect we have for people who are, in a narrow frame of reference, different.
Ireland has a team of 48 athletes ready to give their all in Rio. That they will do so before stadia that may be fuller than expected as a result of an apparent late surge in sales.
There will be major issues in terms of logistics, likely media coverage and in other areas as a result of issues of finance around the Rio games.
Everybody saw them coming, everybody assumed it would be ‘alright on the night’. It won’t be as bad as once feared but neither will it be as good for the athletes as they have a right to deserve given the enormous sums of money within the Olympic movement.
The Paralympics are not perfect. A leading Australian cyclist, a medal winner at the last two games, failed a dope test in June and admitted this week that his use of EPO had been to achieve better results.
The spectre of cheating and doping does not swerve around Paralympians because they have a disability.
In many ways it is ironic that the scientific advances which enable athletes to live a more ordinary life are in every sense performance enhancing. That phrase though has a different meaning in elite sport.
Paralympian are always at great pains to highlight that this is sport at the highest level. We should treat success or failure based on personal performance not on their ability to perform at all. To do that would be too condescending.
And yet over the last four years especially we have learned more about the impact of disability, and how it can be managed if never quite overcome.
This learning, for those willing to listen, has changed the way we treat our fellow human beings. That in itself is a great thing.
For the next ten days we will celebrate great achievement and hopefully a medal rush we can be proud of across a wide range of sports. RTE will deliver more coverage than ever before and Paralympics Ireland, supported by Allianz will keep us on top of the key moments through social media and live streaming.
It is not naive to suspend cynicism at a point like this. There will be time after for highlighting how things could have been done better at international level.
We wil be watching, cheering, having our perception of what is possible and what it means to be human altered.
Our athletes deserve to know that we are behind them for this one glorious moment in the spotlight.
Support the Paralympians through an imaginative crowdfunding campaign here.
