Prof. Toni Bruce
Professor of sport sociology and sports media at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is a regular columnist and research source for journalists. Her research focuses on media representations of gender and nationalism
Email: t.bruce@auckland.ac.nz
The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games was all about athletes. It wasn’t about superhumans. It wasn’t about comparing disability sport to ‘real’ (able-bodied) sport. It wasn’t about gender difference.
Instead, it was just sport, played at the highest level on a global stage by the best athletes in the world in each Paralympic event and category.
This conclusion emerged from sampling live broadcast coverage on New Zealand television provided by the global Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) feed. Over 40 percent of New Zealanders tuned into 600 hours of coverage on free-to-air TV and five pop-up streaming channels.
Globally, online and television audiences also increased, along with the number of broadcasters. As French crowds embraced the event, athletes reported being overwhelmed by the noise and support.
A British commentator’s summary that “It’s been an absolute festival of top-level sport” embodied the Paralympic guideline to “avoid portraying people with a disability who succeed as ‘extraordinary’ or ‘superhuman’.”
In similar ways to current shifts in discourses of women’s sport, the Paralympics live commentary I heard represents a potentially seismic shift in society’s understanding of who counts as an elite athlete and expands the boundaries of what counts as elite sport.
In 2021, I argued that the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games were a good news story for women’s sport, especially for home nation women, who received significant attention. That finding still holds true in Paris but the shift is wider and deeper, with increases in the number and proportion of female competitors (45%) and events.
There was little evidence of gender differences in the language Paralympic commentators used to describe female competitors. Overall, the quality of live coverage for both genders was high, as commentators focused on the skills, passion, preparation and dedication of athletes and teams.
Commentary resounded with active language, such as in the women’s seated volleyball final, which was among the most exciting sports events I have ever seen. The commentators clearly knew the teams and players, their histories and their skillsets, and integrated that information throughout. Their game-play descriptions focused on strength and skill: “The athleticism that we are seeing in addition to the volleyball skill is so impressive”, “she’s a threat from all over the court”, “so cool and collected”, “she will thread that needle”, “she finds that gap and she wails on it”, and “[they] are doing such a good job of finding the gaps”.
In all the events I watched, commentators highlighted the skills of individual players and teams, discussed their previous Paralympic and World Championship successes or challenges, and smoothly integrated Paralympic-specific rules for each sport when viewers needed that information, especially when Paralympic rules differed from Olympic rules. For example, in women’s wheelchair basketball, a commentator explained, “you are not allowed to put your hand completely in the face, not allowed to impair the vision of the player.”
In the gripping women’s powerlifting up to 86kg and over 86kg finals, commentators interspersed active language that highlighted achievement and athlete or crowd emotion alongside the lifters’ histories and Paralympic-specific rules, such as the option of an additional powerlift if an athlete is within 10kg of a record, which came into play in both events.
Nigerian Folashade Oluwafemiayo, who broke the world record twice on her way to gold in the over 86kg category, was described as “without peer” and “the greatest to ever do it in the women’s over 86 kilo class.” Brazilian Tayana Madeiros “snatched gold at the very last moment” and broke the up to 86kg Paralympic record “with every last sinew of muscle and soul.”
Commentators also highlighted fan emotion, describing the crowd as having gone “insane” or being “in raptures” as both Oluwafemiayo and Madeiros broke records with an additional powerlift. As the crowd roared, clapped and whistled, commentators described the arena as “a room still suspended in disbelief. The courage, the conviction, the strength to pull off the lift of the Games. An emotional crescendo to an extraordinary contest.”
In another shift, smiling and tears were no longer the primary domain of sportswomen, nor did tears by male athletes need to be justified. Most promising was the significant reduction in the use of “lady” or “ladies”. The few slips—primarily by male British commentators who almost immediately reverted to full name or surname—reflect the reality that it takes time and commitment to shift commentator practices.
Gender-differentiated language was primarily limited to identifying an event as men’s or women’s. Competitors were usually referred to as athletes or by name and country rather than by gender.
Commentators rarely identified female Paralympics by first name only, a naming pattern that has been critiqued for infantilizing women, but almost always used athletes’ surnames or both names. In the rare cases of first name only, it closely followed an earlier reference to her full name or surname, such as “Erickson is an absolute beast…I love watching Heather play.”
On only two occasions did I hear the Paralympic Games compared to “real” sport. In both cases, it was intended positively but lacked recognition that this comparison implicitly privileges able-bodied sport as the norm.
The coverage of these Paris Paralympic Games showed that ‘real’ sport is defined by skill, commitment, determination and effort. Sport is just sport, no matter who is playing it.
