As it has done for two decades, China has crushed the Paralympic medal rankings. A domination that can be explained by an effective detection policy and enormous resources invested in parasport.
Wednesday, September 4, mid-morning, on the side of the road in Clichy-sous-Bois, we were twiddling our thumbs while waiting for the runners to pass. To pass the time, an employee of the French Paralympic and Sports Committee had suggested that we play his favorite game of the moment: find the exact number of gold medals for China. A sort of Paralympic version of the Price is Right. “Be careful, you have to give an answer quickly, because maybe in a minute they will have three or four more,” he joked. At the time, the Chinese had “only” 59 titles. This Sunday evening, they will leave Paris with 94 gold medals. That is more than Great Britain (49) and the United States (36) combined, yet second and third nations in the medal rankings, and far ahead of the 19 French titles.
This monstrous and unchallenged domination is not new. Since Athens in 2004, China has always crushed the competition at the Paralympic Games. Of course, it also plays the leading roles at the Olympics, but not by as much margin over its competitors. In almost all sports, its representatives bring home medals. In Paris, a Chinese climbed the podium in 19 of the 22 Paralympic disciplines, with sweeps in athletics (59 medals including 21 gold), swimming (54 medals including 22 gold), table tennis (24 medals including 11 gold) and fencing (19 medals including 10 gold). A few days ago, in the stands of the Defense Arena, a colleague joked: “Swimming is a bit boring. You hear the Chinese anthem more than you see the swimmers in the water.”
Slogans that urge you to excel for your nation
However, it was not always like this. In the 1990s, China was just another Paralympic swimming team. In 1992, in Barcelona, it finished only thirteenth (with 11 gold medals), before doing barely better in 1996 in Atlanta (ninth with 16 titles). And then, Beijing began to dream of organizing the Games, both Olympic and Paralympic. The country won its case in 2001 and had seven years to prepare to welcome the cream of world sport in the summer of 2008. From then on, having the best athletes in the world became a necessity, a soft power issue. It would be inconceivable in the eyes of the leaders if the Chinese did not shine at home, under the gaze of the world’s media. So, the State pulled out all the stops to find athletes, train them and make them perform.
In 2007, a year before the home Games, a huge sports centre was built in the north of Beijing. A sort of Chinese-style National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance (INSEP), but only for para-sport. It covers 23 hectares, explains the world who was able to visit it recently, which makes it, from afar, “the largest training center for high-level athletes with disabilities in the world.” There is a red flag with yellow stars everywhere, and slogans on the walls urging athletes to excel for their nation.
The training center does not work alone. All over the country, other, smaller structures see athletes with disabilities pass through by the shovelful and are responsible for detecting medalists. The pool of the most populous country in the world is rich: it is estimated that there are around 85 million Chinese with disabilities. “We invite people who aspire to practice, we detect them and the Chinese machine is on its way.explains in the team teacher-researcher Arnaud Waquet, specialized in social sciences of sport. We select a large cohort of 1000 people, we quickly reduce it to 100, 50 then 10 people who we will overtrain. This is pyramidal selection.”
“Industrial factory of high-level athletes”
China also cultivates mystery around its Paralympic athletes: most of them rarely leave the country, only compete in the mandatory competitions to qualify for the Games and do not respond to requests from international journalists. So much so that it often happens that a Chinese person comes out of nowhere or almost and blows away the competition during a Paralympic event. The fencer Maxime Valet, beaten in Paris by the Chinese as soon as he entered the competition in foil and sabre, complained about it: “Since the International Federation does not force them to compete, they are poorly ranked. But they are so superior that they don’t care.”
While other nations are also investing in parasport, none have taken the system as far as China. And that is likely to continue for a few more years. “Unless a country is willing to replicate this kind of industrial factory of elite athletes and invest resources at that level and beyond – or China decides it no longer wants to do that – it will continue to dominate for many decades to come.”British researcher Ian Brittain, who specializes in Paralympic sport, told CNN.
However, Beijing is far from being irreproachable when it comes to the inclusion of people with disabilities in society. In 2013, a Human Rights Watch report spoke of an education system that massively rejects them. As a result, 28% of children with disabilities did not have access to education and more than 40% of adults were illiterate. Rates that are well above the national average. “A part of the population is completely discredited. In schools, people with disabilities are put aside. They have no access to education and jobs, or very little. They are hidden. They are not at all part of an inclusion mechanism,” said, still in the teamArnaud Waquet. In recent years, new laws have been passed to combat these discriminations. But China is starting from a long way off.
