Para athletes call for more help

NEW YORK • Mikey Brannigan, the 1,500m gold medallist at the Rio Paralympics, still remembers the stress and confusion of being lost in an airport.

In 2016, Brannigan, who is intellectually disabled, had no one accompanying him as he flew to a team training camp ahead of the event in Brazil.

His father Kevin said his son missed his connection and did not find his way to another flight for hours.

"It was a lot harder because I flew by myself," Brannigan said. "I felt bad that I missed my flight, and I was worried that I wouldn't get to the California training in Chula Vista."

His disquieting experience illustrates the kind of challenge that many athletes with physical and intellectual disabilities encounter as they travel to compete.

With the Tokyo Paralympics beginning next Tuesday, some American athletes and their advocates, including members of Congress, are pointing to stories like Brannigan's as they criticise the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) for failing to provide what they consider necessary support.

"Athletes with disabilities are only able to compete at this level when they have access to the necessary support and accommodation that they need to be successful," Senator Maggie Hassan wrote in a letter to the committee.

"They should not be forced to navigate the Tokyo Olympics without the support that they need, particularly in the midst of a global pandemic."

The governor and two senators from Maryland, the home state of champion swimmer Becca Meyers, echoed Hassan's concerns.

The issue is not new but gained new attention last month when Meyers, a three-gold Paralympic champion who is deaf and blind, withdrew from the US Paralympic swimming team because her mother, Maria, would not be allowed to accompany her in Tokyo.

Maria has regularly travelled with the US team to assist her 26-year-old daughter, since her harrowing experience in Rio de Janeiro.

Meyers' withdrawal was not a dramatic last-ditch attempt to win approval for her mother to travel.

By then, she had accepted that she would not have the support she needed to swim in Tokyo and add to her collection of six Paralympic medals from London and Rio.

Now, she was pursuing a broader goal: Raising awareness about the complications that elite athletes with disabilities routinely face and pressing for better accommodation for their needs.

"I'm speaking up to spark a conversation so that we can effect change and protect future generations," Meyers said. "No one should ever feel afraid on Team USA."

Other American Paralympians, past and present, and their families responded to her announcement by describing their own difficulties getting sufficient resources to compete safely at an elite level.

Logistics at the Paralympics are particularly challenging this year because of the pandemic, which has led to a ban on international and domestic spectators and restrictions on the size of each country's delegation.

But the Paralympians have asserted the USOPC's support of athletes with disabilities was lacking well before the pandemic.

The USOPC said in response: "Our goal is to ensure all athletes are supported within our staff structure."

Some athletes say that staff structure can leave substantial gaps in support. Hannah McFadden, a two-time US Paralympic wheelchair racer, said that she and her sister Tatyana McFadden, a four-time Paralympian, follow a routine when flying home from international competitions.

They wait after they deplane to make sure that their visually impaired teammates have someone to guide them to a connecting gate. If not, the McFaddens help.

"A lot of times, we'll have visually impaired athletes travelling by themselves in hopes they meet up with a teammate, so it gets a little crazy," Hannah said.

The USOPC has cited the restrictions on the size of national delegations as the reason for denying Maria a spot on the Tokyo team.

Yet many of Becca's supporters have noted that the restrictions have not forced Olympic golfers to play without caddies or equestrian competitors to make do without grooms to tend to their horses.

The disparity in defining essential personnel, Meyers and other Paralympians said, reflects a persistent misunderstanding of what constitutes equitable treatment of disabled athletes.

Linda Mastandrea, a disability legal expert who is a former Paralympic wheelchair racer, questioned whether athletes like Brannigan and Meyers were getting what they needed to be safe and thrive according to disability accommodation laws.

"Becca and athletes like her require personal assistant services," she said. "It's a tool that allows them to compete, much like a guide runner for a blind athlete or a caddie for a golfer."

For Meyers, Rio was a turning point.

The USOPC did not assign a personal care assistant to the swim team, even though Meyers' vision had worsened since she competed at the 2012 Games, and there were other blind swimmers on the team.

The USOPC said that swim team coaches, staff and teammates were available to support her in 2016. But Meyers claimed they were too busy or not knowledgeable enough to adequately help her.

"Nobody took the time to orient me and tell me where to go," she said. "I just felt paralysed."

Meyers was not able to eat properly and regain her strength until coaches allowed her to leave the Paralympic Village and stay with her parents.

The experience pushed her to make sure she always had a personal assistant when she travelled for competitions, despite it being at her own expense.

Others like Brannigan and Larry Sapp, a swimming record-holder with an intellectual disability, who also need chaperons, are turning to crowdfunding.

Since 2016, Brannigan's family has paid for a personal coach, Sonja Robinson, to be with him at all times.

As his coach is not formally a member of the team, that means they will have to pay Robinson's expenses in Japan and have started a GoFundMe campaign requesting US$15,000 (S$20,400) in donations.

Sapp is raising money online to pay for his mother and usual travelling companion, Dee, to accompany him because she is not part of the team, with a GoFundMe campaign seeking US$10,000.

NYTIMES