you
okay thanks for the opportunity to bring
my perspective here today what I'm
wanting to talk about is the interface
between disability sport and society's
appreciation of disability or perception
of disability and how each have changed
the other in order to look forward
though we need to look back and what I
want to start out with is looking at
that medical model of disability which
we can say was generated or started just
after World War two I was actually born
during the dependency model
I got polio living in Sierra Leone West
Africa now the heart of Ebola
I got polio when I was three and myself
and my father moved to England and the
point of that story is that I attended
the chaley heritage crafts school for
crippled children and in that story it
shows how disability was seen at that
time so it was a craft school for
crippled children so that children there
could be trained to do a craft shoe
making that kind of thing in order to
get gainful employment and early
wheelchair technology as an example
reflected that disability model not very
functional out of the medical
environment and when we look at early
prosthesis as we see here these aren't
generated for the benefit of the people
with disabilities I suggest to you that
these are more generated to make
able-bodied people feel more comfortable
being around people with disabilities
fortunately fortunately we moved around
about the mid-1970s to taking a more
functional model of disability the
trouble with that is that our aspiration
was for normalization normalization
being the closer to able-bodied
bateau an example of normalization I can
kind of stagger up on braces and
crutches and none of my students would
have ever seen me like that because I
can't do anything on braces and crutches
but when someone without a disability
sees me up on braces and crutches I get
a comment something like oh you're
getting better or you're getting more
normal and there I am with or both my
arms occupied not being able to move
more than about 20 meters independently
completely unable to cook anything or
make tea and I'm thinking yeah this is
better
that's because being judged by that
normative standard the closer it looks
to being able bodied the better
fortunately fortunately with our
functional model of disability what we
started to see was people taking control
of their own functionality at the same
time as the furthest distance to race in
a wheelchair in international
competition was a hundred meters back in
1975 a guy called Bob Hall entered the
Boston Marathon in a wheelchair that
hopefully you can see up there that
still looks very much like a wheelchair
and completed it in four hours nothing
to write home about but as we started
seeing function taking over we started
seeing the development in wheelchair
sport a very specific wheelchair
oriented equipment this for example is a
racing wheelchair looks nothing like a
regular wheelchair and in fact it
doesn't function like a regular
wheelchair the only thing this
wheelchair can do is go far work forward
very very quickly but designed for that
purpose
it's an incredibly efficient piece of
technology that I'll come back to in a
little bit here you see one of the
Ultimates of functional definition and
this is a sled hockey sled used to play
ice hockey at Paralympic competition
you'll notice one thing strange about
this wheelchair doesn't have any wheels
so we've evolved function to the point
where sometimes wheelchairs don't have
wheels
moving over to amputee sport my first
contact was in 1988 when I was at the
Seoul Paralympic Games racing for the
USA this guy Dennis Erla was racing for
the USA and it was the first time I saw
a truly functional item of prosthetic
equipment if you can notice his leg
there in this image his right leg is
artificial and if he can maybe get a
look at his foot his foot is actually
planted down and when you see him go to
the line he would have to limp to the
line because he was own inefficient
prosthetic when he was running because
his foot was set in a running position
but with that functional prosthetic a
note that it doesn't look like a leg
it's not designed to look like a leg
it's designed to have someone running
quickly running fast very efficiently
and Ola did that and got easily held the
world record for running for an athlete
with an amputation but Ola got out
technologic by a guy called Tony
vaulting pest and what's cool about Tony
volm past was that he was a double leg
below knee amputee sprinter
traditionally the conception is losing
both legs is a greater disability than
only losing one leg we have
classification systems to cover that but
what vaulting pest thought was okay if I
don't have either leg I can make my legs
as long as I want consequently
increasing your stride length and here
you see volton post beating Ola in a
race and Ola called foul so now we have
someone who's more disabled than its
competitor gaining an advantage from its
disability ultimately we put in
regulations with regard to that I
mentioned nor normalization
you also have the turret tyranny of
normative thought normative thought is
that we people with disabilities poor us
were always at a disadvantage now I'll
give you an illustration of that if I
told you that I was going to give you a
million dollars tomorrow if you got this
question right or I'd shoot you if you
got this question wrong so don't pretend
would you select my left hand or my
right hand as representing a person with
a disability I think you'd all pick the
right hand correct tell me I'm wrong I'm
right oh no that's the social
construction of disability we are less
than when compared to a normative
standard and that's what gets brought in
regularly and so we see athletes like
Jim Abbott here who pitched for ten
years in the major leagues and he only
had one hand so what did they do as soon
as they saw Jim Abbott the pitcher
coming up to pitch let's bunt he's only
got one hand
normative attitude who in this world do
you think has had more experiences
fielding bunts than somebody who's only
grown up with one hand and he's now
pitching in the major leagues if they've
switched their heads on they must have
understood he had to be expert at
fielding bunks or he wouldn't have
pitched in the major leagues they were
still bunting on him in his tenth year
in the major leagues and here's an image
of him after pitching a no-hitter for
the New York Yankees but you can see how
normative thinking advantaged him we
have here an athlete called Tony Robles
who won the collegiate wrestling
championship a few years ago and this
image shows him with everyone standing
up and applauding his victory because my
goodness great
just me how brave is this individual
only has one leg and here he is winning
a national wrestling championship
well I'm sorry Tony but you were a
benefactor of normative thinking think
about this he has so many advantages
relative to the people he was setting up
to wrestle against he has only three
limbs how many times were his opponents
wrestling against somebody with only
three limbs plus he only had one leg
that meant that he didn't have the
weight of his second leg consequently
his official weight was 125 pounds and
he should have been wrestling at a
weight division of a hundred and fifty
seven pounds so consequently the people
who were facing him was smaller than him
and had no experience wrestling this
larger person with only one leg
normative thinking stopped them saying
hang on does this guy have an advantage
there are a few people who have thrown
away that normative thinking the
International powerlifting Federation
for example now makes adjustment for
lower body weight they want to get onto
my central thesis and the idea is
valorisation valorisation goes past
normalization and says we should be
looking at whatever it is not as how
that action compares to a normative
standard or a majority standard but how
it compares and how it's of worth in and
of itself Oscar Pistorius is a perfect
example of that when Oscar Pistorius
came to be to want to race at the
Olympics in 2012 and there are many
legal challenges normative thinking led
them to evaluate the Blade Runner with
regard to does he have an advantage or a
advantage relative to able-bodied
runners and he was able to make his case
there for me valorized thinking would be
is he doing the same act and when you
looked at it biomechanically when he
looked at it physiologically when you
looked at his split times there's no
doubt that one thing we can say about
Oscar Pistorius is he wasn't performing
the same act consequently surprisingly
enough I don't think Oscar Pistorius
should have raced in the Olympics
because he wasn't doing the same thing
he may have visually look similar
although he did look different but he
just wasn't performing the same action
so the Blade Runner and the curb sorry
the corollary to the Blade Runner is
that at the Paralympic Games two weeks
later he was beaten by another double
amputee runner because that double
amputee runner had not reduced his
technology in order to be able to
compete in the Olympics so Oscar
Pistorius did not maximize the
technological abilities and the rules
that would have allowed him that allow
him to race in the Paralympics he dumb
them down so he could be close enough to
able-bodied to be able to race in the
Olympics consequently he lost a race in
the Paralympics to another runner Alain
Oliveira you can see here who had
maximized the rules and had longer limbs
their question is that technological
doping valorisation means look at an
action in and of itself there's no doubt
we wouldn't say that racing wheelchairs
someone who's racing in a wheelchair
forming the same act as someone running
and they're not because now the fastest
time than a marathoner can run is about
two hours and five minutes the fastest
wheelchair racer now does it in an hour
and 22 minutes
no power no gearing forty or fifty
minutes faster than the fastest runner
when you think about that for those of
us old enough to recognize it that's sub
four-minute miles for all 26 miles now
we should value that as an athletic
activity in and of itself and nothing to
how it compares to people without
disabilities I'm excited about the new
wheelchairs that are showing up and when
you look at prosthetic advancements
think about the picture with the
artificial arm whose wrist is not
restricted by human anatomy what happens
when that risk can turn around 360
degrees we need something new and what
we are seeing now is the development of
new technologies as soon as we have a
new technology we have new sport and
with a combination of virtual imagery
prosthetics
we're going to be seeing very different
sports in the future and I would suggest
to you that technologically we're going
to see the most extreme and best
sporting events coming out of the
disabled or Paralympic sporting world
last reflection for you Rosevelt had to
hide that he had polio
did he not and they went through many
extremes to hide his disability we just
elected a governor of the state of Texas
who in his advertising campaigns made it
very very clear that he was a wheelchair
user
he used his wheelchair as an advantage
that is our evolution and I think if we
adopt valorisation we start looking at
things for the worth they are the sky is
the limit
thank you for your time today sorry for
going a little over
you