Culture | The sports page

What should “inclusion” include at the Paralympics?

The games make a virtue of their diversity. But there’s still room to grow

Photograph: Getty Images

HOW INCLUSIVE should the Paralympic games be? The question is a tricky one for the organisers of the event, whose very ethos is to offer opportunities to athletes unable to compete in the Olympics. In many ways this year’s games were a testament to the success of that mission. More countries than ever before competed in Paris. Yet a wide range of para-athletes, and particular disabilities, remained absent. There was no room, for example, for blind golfers or amputee footballers, deaf sprinters or swimmers with organ transplants, since the games treat each sport and each disability in distinct fashion. Might these athletes be seen in future competitions?

Explore more

More from Culture

Jellycat Fish & Chips Experience at Selfridges, London

Millennials and Gen Z are falling hard for stuffed animals

Plushies are cute, cuddly and costly

The front page of the new issue of satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo entitled "C'est Reparti" ("Here we go again"), is displayed at a kiosk in Nice February 25, 2015.

Ten years after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, satire is under siege

Public support is waning for the right to offend


Pandemonium. Found in the collection of Louvre, Paris.

Why do rebels and revolutionaries love “Paradise Lost”?

John Milton’s epic poem has galvanised rabble-rousers for centuries


The Colombian powerhouse behind some of streaming’s biggest hits

If you enjoyed “Narcos” or “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, you have Dynamo to thank

What Haruki Murakami’s fans get wrong about him

He is not so much a surrealist as a dogged observer of solitude

The British take their crisps more seriously than any other nation

No other snack bridges the class divide in the same way