Because the United States is not a power in the Paralympic Games?

United States ranked only sixth place in the medals table of the Paralympic Games of London 2012

Except the Moscow-1980, when boycotted the event, the United States were among the top three in the medals table in every summer Olympic Games editions. In the last four editions of Paralympics occupied this track only in Beijing 2008 - and just got the third position. After all, why most sports power in the world can not be a giant also among the appropriate rules?

The situation has led to a more forceful debate after London 2012, when the Americans had their worst participation in Paralympic history. There were 98 medals in total (31 golds, 29 silvers and 38 bronzes), numbers that put the country just at the top of the medals table. In the Olympics the same year, even with a much smaller universe of podiums, the United States collected 46 golds, 29 silvers and 29 bronzes (104 in total) - no one won more.

The comparison instilled more tension in preparing Americans for the Paralympic Games in 2016, but also extended the debate on the performance difference. And among the many theories about why the United States are not a power in the adapted sport, all necessarily go through five aspects: management, money, culture, impact and reality of rivals.

The management issue: lack autonomy to Paralympic sport in the US

Unlike what happens in Brazil, which has independent committees for Olympic sport (COB) and Paralympics (CPB), Americans undergo both teams to the summit of the USOC (Olympic Committee of the United States, its acronym in English). And so, over the years, generated in the country a series of debates on priorities and representation.

The Paralympic movement is also far less politically settled in the United States. The country only began to have adapted competitions in 1948 and the first edition of the Summer Paralympics took place only in 1960. At that time, the Americans had already played 13 editions Olympics.

The financial issue: the US have already been processed to so

The sporty performance of the US in the Olympics is financial support. The USOC made $ 148 million in 2015 and at least $ 76 million was allocated directly to the preparation of athletes. Another $ 42 million turned investment structure. The Paralympic sport got a small slice.

This small slice is a national polemic reason today, but has been the subject of a debate even in courts in the past decade. In 2003, three Paralympians sued the USOC too focus money on Olympic sport. They did not win the cause, but it made the entity change. When the legal wrangling was still ongoing, the annual amount for the Paralympics was increased from $ 3 million to US $ 11.4 million.



The cultural question: where are the Paralympic sports leagues?

One of the bases of the sporting success of the United States in the Olympic Games is the force that the Americans have in local leagues. The basketball selection is the product of the wealth of talent in the NBA, for example, and the amount of good values ​​that the country has in sports such as athletics and swimming is directly related to the level of these sports disputes in university competitions.

In Paralympic sport, the Americans do not have strong leagues. No competitions that serve as a reference, the country suffers in the exploration phase. In 2013, a national survey conducted by the Trailblazers agency with disabled found that 94% of respondents believed that the Games

Paralympic encouraged more people to enter the sport. However, only 50% had any kind of physical activity.

The United States still has a serious problem of exploitation of war veterans. The country has strong appreciation of people from politics with military history, but there were only 20 officers or former officers in the delegation that went to London-2012. The Department of Defense and the Veterans Affairs Department to come to talk about a policy to increase this number - the percentage of former soldiers who attend sporting events in the country rose from 31% to 54% in the last decade.

The question of impact: it is still difficult to see the US Paralympics
Main sport media partner in the United States, NBC aired 6,755 hours of live Olympic Games in 2016. In the Paralympics, will be only 66 hours.

Although Channel 4 contribute 500 hours of television broadcasts of the Paralympic Games in the United States, there is a distance also on the rebound and the consequent popularity of both events.

The issue of rivals: the investment of other grew, and the distribution changed
In 1960, the first edition of the Paralympic Games, the United States got the fifth place in the medals table. There were 25 honors in total (11 golds, seven silvers and seven bronzes). In the next edition, in 1964, the country already had to add 123 podiums to be the leading event wins.

The Americans beat 1984's record Paralympic medals. The country has amassed 396 honors that year (136 gold, 131 silver and 129 silver), a level never repeated by anyone.

The number of medals from the Paralympics changed in subsequent editions. In 1984 there were 345 gold medals in swimming and only 447 in athletics in 2012 the distributed games 503 honors in total. The reduction has to do mainly with clumped categories and changes in the sports program.

These changes gave more weight to ways in which the United States was less dominant. In addition, they coincided with increasing investment from other countries in Paralympic sport. This is the case of China, 28th in the 1984 medals table, which had risen to sixth place in 2000 and dominates disputes since 2008. The Asian bases created in a reality that was already in transition and were able to plan from the start something that the Americans had to see how the transition.