All hail the winter paralympics (just not the coverage)

Disabled sport has undergone an extraordinary transformation in recent years, and, it is to be hoped, this is reflected in a greater tolerance and understanding of disabled people and their problems- which in the last analysis is what disabled competitive sport is all about. This morning it has emerged that that there has been more interest in the Paralympic winter games than in the summer games in Beijing 6 years ago. There is still some sales resistance out there though. One of my closest friends feels there is a paucity in terms of athleticism in the Paralympic disciplines, though it may simply be he is too busy to have devoted the time to have seen that he is wrong about that. I find the athleticism, skill and sheer competitive elan  displayed in both winter and summer games to be every bit as high as among the able bodied athletes, given the obvious differences.


Par example, I would cite the skiers, who race down the same mountains as the able bodied ones, but lacking limbs, eyesight or some other vital attribute. And because of these disabilities, they risk even greater injury than their able bodied colleagues. Witness the sit-ski super G event on Monday, when the American skier Alana Miller came a hideous cropper at over 100 kph and had to be helicoptered off the piste. Strapped into her extremely dangerous-looking contraption she was far less able to protect herself than her able-bodied friends would have been.


But this brings me to my second point: the coverage. Immediately following this accident, when we could see the poor girl was not moving, and we, the viewers, needed the closure to see if she was OK in any sense of the word, we were denied that opportunity by the programme maker's decision to cut to a commercial break. These are small issues, but vital ones. It's like the handshake at the end of a tennis match: I need to see that, to show that really the whole thing wasn't really a fight to the death, that the opponents have risen above the competition and shown their intrinsic respect for one another. Likewise in this event, we need to see what happened after an accident- crashes are, let's face it, sensational television, and the aftermath is too, and for very human reasons. So, how was the decision made? Was it simply that the director thought "there's going to be a little gap in the action, so there's time for an ad break", or was there some more sinister, politically correct thinking going on, deciding that watching Alana Miller's rescue was somehow unseemly and not appropriate to be shown on television? I do hope not. Because if they can show someone being assisted after a big crash in say, the downhill race on the Hannenkalm and not during a disabled skier's race, then that's actually discrimination.  Regrettably, this is not my only criticism of Channel 4's coverage


In 2012, and rightly so in my view, a brave decision was made to give the award for best coverage, not to the BBC's coverage of the able-bodied games, but to Channel 4's coverage of the Paralympics. The BBC gave far too much air-time to talking heads, especially the execrable John Inverdale, whereas C4 concentrated more on the events themselves. But in Sochi C4 has made the same mistake: every time I go onto their coverage it seems we are in the studio watching people talking about the games, and far too little of the games themselves. Will Adam Hills and the gang discuss this at the next "The Last Leg" on Friday night, considering the fact that I am not exactly alone in my reservations about its coverage, or will they be reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them? We shall see...