The clash of sporting ideals: Universal rights versus meritocratic exclusion

“ Sports for the disabled have been incorporated into rehabilitation services. Governments at all levels have explored new ways of serving persons with disabilities at the grassroots, and carried out extensive rehabilitation and fitness activities by way of sports. In schools, students with disabilities have been guaranteed equal participation in sports in a bid to ensure their physical and mental health and promote their sound growth. The disabled have a stronger guarantee of the right to health through physical activities. ”

“ For those with disabilities, participating in sports can help build up fitness and mitigate and remove functional impairment. It can increase the individual's capacity to self-support, to pursue interests and hobbies, to increase social interaction, to improve life quality, and to achieve their life's potential.
China attaches great importance to protecting the right to health of persons with disabilities and emphasizes that "every disabled person should have access to rehabilitation services". ”

“ The disabled can fully participate in sports in order to explore the limits of their potential and break through boundaries. Through unity and hard work, they can enjoy equality and participation and a successful life. Parasports promote traditional Chinese cultural values such as harmony, inclusion, cherishing life, and helping the weak, and inspire many more persons with disabilities to develop a passion for parasports and begin to participate. Demonstrating self-esteem, confidence, independence, and strength, they carry forward the spirit of China's sports. ”

“ China upholds humanism and internationalism, emphasizes that all those with disabilities are equal members of the human family, and promotes international parasports cooperation and exchanges. This contributes to mutual learning through exchanges between civilizations, and to the building of a global community of shared future.
Conclusion The care that is provided for the disabled is a marker of social progress. Developing parasports plays a vital role in encouraging persons with disabilities to build self-esteem, confidence, independence, and strength, and pursue self-improvement. ”

“ At West Point amateur sport flourishes in its perfection, and a very high standard of accomplishment has been attained in football. There are no cross-cuts to the kind of football success West Point has worked for: it is all a question of merit based on competency, accuracy and fearless execution. Those of us who have had the privilege of assisting in the development of West Point football have learned much of real value from the officers and cadets about the game and [Pg 212] what really counts in the make-up of a successful team. ”

“ The immediate connection between physical fitness and the outcome of practical experiences dominated by physical aspects was established within very limited, but strongly patterned, activity. It soon became the measure of survival success, and thus the rationality shared by the community experiencing the survival of the fittest is reflected in competition. Athletes competed in order to please gods; to conjure fertility, rain, or the extension of life ”

“ Nearly every muscle of the body is brought into play. The triceps, or pushing muscles on the back of the arm, the shoulder and back muscles, are the ones especially developed in boxing. The bare back of a boxer is a perfect mass of muscle. Great knots and coils appear between and across the shoulders with every movement, while the ridges stand out clear down to the base of the spine. Let a boy practise a single left-hand lead in front of a mirror in gymnastic costume, and note how [Pg 64] many muscles are used. ”

“ Sports constituted their own domains of competence and performance, and generate expectations of partial sport literacies. That in the process, because they address physical attributes and intellectual functions, sports became a molding machine for the athletes, another nature, should not go without saying or understanding what it takes to succeed. All over the world, where efficiency reached levels corresponding to the new scale of humankind, football, basketball, soccer, and tennis players, swimmers, runners, and gymnasts are created almost from scratch. ”

“ Every man that is striving for the mastery is ‘temperate in all things.’ The discipline for runners and athletes was rigid. They had ten months of spare diet—no wine—hard gymnastic exercises every day, until not an ounce of superfluous flesh was upon their muscles, before they were allowed to run in the arena. And, says Paul, that is the example for us. They practise this rigid discipline and abstinence by way of preparation for the race, and after it was run they might dispense with the training. You and I have to practise rigid abstinence as part of the race, as a continuous necessity. ”

“ Performance is what attracts, and it is the only thing which gains prizes that the winner of the ancient Olympics, who was also spoiled, never dreamed of. "Winner take all" is the final rule, and the result is that winning, more than competing, has become the goal.
The efficiency requirement leads not only to the relative illiteracy of those involved in sports, but also to a practice of discriminatory physical selection. ”

“ More and more disabled people are engaging in rehabilitation and fitness activities, participating in parasports in their communities and homes, and taking part in outdoor sports activities. The Disability Support Project under the National Fitness Program has been implemented, and sports instructors for people with disabilities have been trained. People with severe disabilities have access to rehabilitation and fitness services in their homes.
Every effort has been made to prepare for the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Winter Games, and Chinese athletes will participate in all events. ”

“ Through participating in rehabilitation and fitness events and activities, persons with disabilities have become more familiar with parasports, begun to take part in sports activities, and learned to use rehabilitation and fitness equipment. They have had the opportunity to demonstrate and exchange rehabilitation and fitness skills. Greater fitness and a more positive mindset have inspired their passion for life, and they have become more confident about integrating into society. ”

“ Beijing built a batch of standardized service centers named "Sweet Home" to help the disabled and their families to enjoy access to vocational rehabilitation, educational training, day care, and recreational and sports activities, creating conditions for them to integrate into society on an equal basis.
The public's understanding of provision for the disabled and their sports has increased. The concepts of "equality, participation and sharing" are taking root, while understanding, respecting, helping, and caring for the disabled are becoming the norm in society. ”

“ By carrying out parasports activities across the whole country, enriching the content of such activities, improving sports services, and intensifying scientific research and education, China has encouraged the disabled to become more active participants in rehabilitation and fitness activities. ”

“ The specialized nature of games such as hockey or football leads these to address only one aspect of existence-the experience of the particular sport. A game can degenerate from being a competition structured by rules to a confrontation of nerves, violence, or national pride, or into sheer exhibitionism, disconnected from the drive for victory.
Although the physical basis for the practical experience of sports is the same- human beings as they evolved in time-in different cultures, different recurrent patterns and different meanings attached to them can be noticed. ”

“ The start of a football game is most exciting; not alone for the players, but for the spectators as well. Every one is keyed up in anticipation of the contest. The referee's whistle blows; the ball is kicked off—the game has begun.
Opponents now meet face to face on the field of battle. What happens on the gridiron is plainly seen by the spectators, but it is not possible for them to hear the conversations which take place. ”

“ As Garry Cochran used to say:
"If I find any man on my football squad showing a white feather, I'll have him hounded out of college."
Football is a game for the man who has nerve, and when put to the test, under severe handicap, proves his sterling worth.
A man has to be game in spirit. A man has to give every inch there is in him. Optimism should surround him. There is much to be gained by hearty co-operation of spirit. There is much in the thought that you believe your team is going to win; that the opposing team cannot beat you ”

“ One of the truly great bacon-getters of the past is Yale's Billy Bull. Football history is full of his exploits when he played on the Yale team in '85, '86, '87 and '88. Old-time players can sit up all night telling stories of the games in which he scored for Yale. His kicking proved a winning card and in happy recollection the old- [Pg 248] timers tell of Bull, the hero of many a game, being carried off the field on the shoulders of an admiring crowd of Yale men after a big victory. ”

“ Those who to-day are prone to decry football as a rough and brutal sport—which it no longer is—might at least reverse their opinions of the present game, could they have spent a certain lurid afternoon in the fall of '87 at Jarvis Field where the elevens of Harvard and Princeton fought a battle so sanguinary as to come down to us through the years legended as a real crimson affair. ”

“ To constantly and persistently cultivate the whole of the body so that at last it shall be capable of anything that sound organs and perfectly developed muscles can accomplish—that is physical culture. The production, in short, of an absolutely perfect body—that is physical culture. To undo the evil for which civilization, and all the drawbacks it has brought in its train, have been responsible in making man regard his body lightly—that is the aim of physical culture. I think I am justified in saying that while it embraces every variety of athletics it goes very much further. ”

“ Although the player in this sport appreciates the loyal support of the thousands on the stands, every man realizes that his checks on the Bank of Cheers can never be cashed unless there is a deposit of hard work and practice. Perhaps all this in an indistinct and indefinite way explains why football players, the country over, understand each other and that when the game is attacked for any reason they stand shoulder to shoulder in defence of what they know down in the bottom of their hearts has such an influence on character building. ”

“ I remember that in the Harvard '96 game, at Cambridge, near the end of the first half, two of our best men (Ad Kelly and Sport Armstrong) were seriously hurt, which disorganized the team. The men were desperate and near the breaking point. Johnny, with his true Princeton spirit, sent this message to each man on the team:
"'If you won't be beat, you can't be beat.'"
"This message brought about a miracle. It put iron in each man's soul, and never from that moment did Harvard gain a yard, and for four succeeding years—'If you won't be beat, you can't be beat,' was Princeton's battle-cry. ”

“ There is no sport in the world that brings out unselfishness as does this great gridiron game of ours. Every fall, second and scrub teams throughout the country sacrifice themselves only to let others enter the promised land of victory. It is a strange thing but one almost never hears any real football player criticise another's making the team, either his own or an All America. ”

“ A similar mistake, though a less serious one, is merely attacking the athletics of public schools as something promoting animalism and brutality. Now brutality, in the only immoral sense, is not a vice of the English public schools. There is much moral bullying, owing to the general lack of moral courage in the public-school atmosphere. These schools do, upon the whole, encourage physical courage; but they do not merely discourage moral courage, they forbid it. ”

“ III The primary question to be resolved is how the present world, with its entrenched pattern of conflict, can change to a world in which harmony and co-operation will prevail.
World order can be founded only on an unshakeable consciousness of the oneness of mankind, a spiritual truth which all the human sciences confirm. Anthropology, physiology, psychology, recognize only one human species, albeit infinitely varied in the secondary aspects of life. ”

“ Recognition of this truth requires abandonment of prejudice—prejudice of every kind—race, class, colour, creed, nation, sex, degree of material civilization, everything which enables people to consider themselves superior to others.
Acceptance of the oneness of mankind is the first fundamental prerequisite for reorganization and administration of the world as one country, the home of humankind. Universal acceptance of this spiritual principle is essential to any successful attempt to establish world peace. ”

“ Racism retards the unfoldment of the boundless potentialities of its victims, corrupts its perpetrators, and blights human progress. Recognition of the oneness of mankind, implemented by appropriate legal measures, must be universally upheld if this problem is to be overcome. ”

“ Through these national sporting events for disabled people on a regular basis, the country has trained a number of athletes with disabilities and improved their sports skills.
3. Chinese athletes show growing strength in winter Paralympic sports. China's successful bid for 2022 Paralympic Winter Games has generated great opportunities for the development of its Winter Paralympic sports. The country attaches great importance to the preparation for Winter Paralympics. ”

“ If ever it should happen that the system of English athletics should vanish from the public schools and the universities, if science should supply some new and non-competitive manner of perfecting the physique, if public ethics swung round to an attitude of absolute contempt and indifference towards the feeling called sport, then it is easy to see what would happen. ”

“ In the lack of clear notions of right and duty the orderly test of strength degenerates into a scuffle, in which the worst passions are released and low forms of power tend to prevail—just as brutal and tricky methods prevail in ill-regulated sports. We need a popular ethics which is at once Christian and evolutionary, recognizing unity of spirit alongside of diversity of standpoint; a coöperative competition, giving each individual, group or race a fair chance for higher self-assertion under conditions so just as to give the least possible occasion for ill-feeling. ”