Paralympics Rugby

Wheelchair Rugby, Paralympics Preliminary Rounds, USA vs. Japan, Champ-de-Mars Arena

We took the five-minute walk from our apartment to the Grand Palais Éphémère at the Champ de Mars to watch a wheelchair rugby double-header, Great Britain vs. Denmark, followed by USA vs Japan.

It goes without saying that I knew nothing about the sport going into the arena, and only slightly more after having watched two complete matches. But that didn't really matter because superficially, the game shares the basic structure as rugby, soccer, basketball, hockey polo or lacrosse. A squad from one team possesses an item (ball, puck or human skull) with the intent of of placing it within the confines of a demarcated scoring location, while a squad from another team attempts to prevent them from doing so. If successful, the other team possesses the item and the roles reverse. If unsuccessful, possession of the item is up for grabs.

I guess in this regard, American football follows a similar blueprint. The important exceptions are that each team fields a completely different squad of players depending on whether or not they possess the ball, and that except for brief moments during the nearly four-hour duration of most games, American football is really fucking boring.

Helpful stadium tip: bring your IRS tax worksheets or some DMV drivers manuals for something interesting do between downs.

So even without knowing the nitty-gritty details about what constitutes a legal maneuver, how the short clock is employed, etc. it was easy to follow the action. A player moves the ball by either cradling it in their lap as they roll the chair with their arms, or by passing it to another player. If a player with the ball crosses a goal line with both wheels, they score. You prevent a player from scoring by crashing into them (perhaps even damaging or tipping over their chair), trapping their chair between two other chairs, snatching the ball off of their lap, intercepting a pass or slapping away a dribble (they must occasionally dribble). 

But even that description is probably more detailed than I required to enjoy the games, which were fast-paced, high-scoring, and short, probably less than an hour and a half all in. The strategies of both Great Britain and Denmark was along the lines of the fast break or post route: One player would break away from the pack and streak towards the goal to receive a pass at just the right moment to roll into the end zone untouched. There seemed to be no real defense against this, and it revealed one of the few ways that players were limited by their equipment. Backpedaling at speed really isn't an option, which takes the role of a strong safety off of the table. There also was no hope that a player would miss a wide open shot at the goal, as happens in basketball, soccer or hockey. So the game was really tight, with most possessions resulting in a score. I started to appreciate the importance of steals and turnovers.

Great Britain ended up winning by two goals, but it set the stage for the second match between two teams that employed a different, much more physical, but a bit lower scoring, strategy. Both Japan and USA prevented a lot of fast breaks by clogging the end zones after each goal or turnover. So while this negated the long bomb, it gave the other team chance to set up plays while advance down the court. The result was more short passing, but also more bone-jarring crashes to stop short distance dashes and more brute strength shoving matches to gain a few inches and get over the border. In the end, Japan won by three goals, perhaps summoning some Sumo power which was just too much for an American goal line stand.

A successful short-distance try by Team USA.

The whole event was wildly entertaining. The venue was packed, I'd say a few thousand people, but still small enough to feel intimate. The stadium had a great hype-woman who could get the fans going during the breaks and time-outs. And the crowd was really into it, perhaps no more than those rooting for Team Japan, who turned out in force and made themselves heard.

So am I a wheelchair rugby fan? No. But we had a great time and I'd go again. It had everything you want in a sport: action, lots of scoring and hard, physical contact. The players were fast, strong, agile, and definitely went all-out to win. 

Watching wheelchair rugby confirmed for me the arbitrariness of distinctions between paralympics and olympics. I've long had my own internal criteria for what constitutes a sport, based on two broad dimensions:

1. Athleticism: combinations of speed, strength, agility, or control in the performance of a skill
2. Direct Competition: how much the effort and decisions of one opponent directly influences the performance of the other opponent

So there is no line between "sport" and "not sport", but some activities are sportier than others. Ballet, for example is highly athletic, but has no competitive dimension during a performance, and so is not very sporty. On the other hand, chess is highly competitive in the moment, but can be played while smoking and doesn't even require any physical involvement at all. An activity like tennis would score highly on both dimensions, whereas in gymnastics or track, the greatest performance in history has little bearing on any other performance except insofar as it motivates or deflates competitors. That's important, but it's not in the same category as getting hit with a right hook that knocks a boxer to the canvas.

So without offense to events like weightlifting, archery, sailing or air pistol, wheelchair rugby is sportier. Certainly the IOC could find some room in the big show. That probably goes for most paralympic sports, too. I don't presume to know how paralympians feel about this, but the perceived prestige gap is obvious from the pagaentry of the opening ceremonies. One proceeded down the Seine on a Cleopatra-like flotilla, past some of most iconic sites in Paris, and included celebrities like Lady Gaga and Celine Dion serenading the crowd from the Eiffel Town with a laser show as her backdrop. The other was a procession through what is basically an outdoor luxury mall.  

And on the same note, the wheelchair rugby teams also complicate the current distinctions between "mens" and "womens" events. In today's matches, women started for Denmark, USA, and Japan. It could be that wheelchair rugby (or paralympic team sports more generally) are very progressive in their eligibility criteria. But more likely, the pool of interested, eligible and available athletes is small even in a large country like the USA, and the pool of world-class caliber athletes is certainly smaller. But within this small talent pool, teams that took the court in the biggest contests of their lives saw the advantage of playing women while men waited their turn. It's hard to believe that we have not yet seen mixed teams--i.e., one woman who is at least as good as the last man signed to the roster--in sports with much larger talent pools such as basketball or soccer. There's been a lot of pearl-clutching about trans people having an unfair advantage in women's events. But I'm less and less convinced that every athlete in a men's activity has an advantage over every athlete in the same women's activity. After all, to the spectators, sports is just a variety of entertainment. In principle, we should just care about watching the best show.