2006 - Melbourne

Tuesday, 24 November 2009 18:18

Following the Manchester 2002 Commonwealth Games’ success at integrating mainstream athletes with elite athletes with a disability (EAD), the parasport movement continued at the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games in Australia.

In Melbourne EAD competed in 12 events in four sports: Table Tennis, Powerlifting, Athletics and Swimming.  The one parasport that was missing from the programme that had taken place in Manchester was Lawn Bowls.

However there were actually more medal events for EAD in Melbourne than in Manchester four years earlier as there were more disability categories in the parasports available.

  
The 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games also saw Canadian Chantal Petitclerc – the wheelchair racer who has now won an astonishing 21 Paralympic medals - become the first athlete with a disability to carry her country’s flag in the Opening Ceremonies of an integrated Games.

During the Games, Natalie du Toit from South Africa (the star of the Manchester 2002 Games) successfully defended two gold medals she won in England while Petitclerc also successfully defended the Women's 800 Metres Wheelchair [T54] title she had won four years earlier.

Among the other medal winners in Melbourne were British swimmers Matt Walker (England) and Dave Roberts (Wales), who both picked up bronze medals in the pool, Sue Gilroy and Cathy Mitton (both England) from Table Tennis, who won gold and bronze respectively and Powerlifting’s Jason Irving (England), who won silver.

The inclusive events at the Commonwealth have gone on to receive some criticism for combining athletes with differing degrees of disability.  In some cases, the medals were still awarded to the ‘first past the post’ (such as Athletics) while other sports saw athletes race against their own respective world records (eg Swimming).

The system  is considered by some to be less fair than the system in place at the Paralympic Games - where participants are grouped into more specific categories regarding the degree of their disability.

However, it remains undeniable that the presence of EAD in the Commonwealth Games is fantastic for the parasport movement and reflects positively on the Commonwealth Games and the power of sport to unite everybody under one banner.

The Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games will look to build on the parasport legacy created by Manchester and Melbourne.  During the Games in India there will be 15 parasport medals included in the programme.