Special Olympics changed attitudes but there’s still much more to do

I TRAVELLED a bit of the country over the weekend, accompanying the Special Olympics torch run. It’s an event that has been on the go for a good many years now.

In the days running up to any Special Olympics national event, a group of officers from the Garda Síochána and the Police Service of Northern Ireland get together to carry the Olympic torch around Ireland. Sometimes they raise funds along the way, sometimes (as this year) the emphasis is on public awareness.

Wherever they go, they represent, in their own way, a fantastic example of cooperation, of the ability to put aside differences in the interests of something bigger.

The torch run always ends at the venue for the opening ceremony. The torches which have been used along the way are all used to light one single torch, which will in turn light the Flame of Hope at the climax of the opening ceremony.

That opening ceremony takes place tomorrow night in the Odyssey Arena in Belfast. It’s the opening ceremony for the 2006 Special Olympics Ireland Games, which run until Sunday.

For the participating athletes, it will be the climax of a couple of years’ preparation and training. After these national games, an Irish team will be selected for the next World Games, which are due to take place in Shanghai next year.

The national games are going to be big — 2,000 athletes from the four corners of Ireland, 500 coaches and delegates, 4,000 family members and 5,500 volunteers, all of whom have also spent months in training so they can give a truly professional account of themselves.

There’s been nothing like it, in fact, since the Special Olympic World Games were held in Dublin in 2003. That was a bigger occasion, of course, in terms of numbers, if not in terms of the qualities on show. This week will be a good time to judge how large a legacy those Games left behind.

Within the Special Olympic movement, we know the kind of progress that has been made. In 2003, we had 8,000 athletes in training. Now there are 11,000 — an enormous jump in just three years.

More clubs are being formed every month, and hundreds of people who got involved by hosting foreign athletes and families at the time of the World Games have stayed involved.

Now they’re in network support groups, an indispensable part of the back-up athletes and clubs need. And hundreds of other people have remained involved as volunteers, willing to help at the drop of a hat.

Other parts of the legacy have been just as impressive — not the least of them being that the national games will be in Northern Ireland, with the wholehearted support of everyone there. The Secretary of State, dozens of companies, a host of celebrities and sports people, and thousands of people from every walk of life have thrown their efforts behind the Games.

There hasn’t been the tiniest hint of sectarianism, and there has been no political point-scoring at all. Whatever help the Games organisers needed has been given unstintingly.

IT tends to be that way in Special Olympics. The organisation seems to have a special quality, an ability to enable people to forget their differences, if only for a while. In 2003, the slogan we used was “Share the feeling”. It captured the public imagination back then and it was obvious, following the torch run, that it still does. Everywhere we went, in sunshine or rain, hundreds of people came out to greet the torch runners and the athletes accompanying them. Many of the people who spoke at the ceremonies around the country referred movingly to their own experiences in 2003.

I’ve always thought that’s because Special Olympics captures, in a way that almost nothing else does, the true spirit of sport.

You’ll see as much determination, concentration, courage and skill at a Special Olympics event as you will at the World Cup. But nobody’s getting paid, and most of the competitors have climbed huge personal mountains to get there.

The grace under pressure that is the hallmark of the genuine sportsperson is also one of the great characteristics of anyone who takes the Special Olympic oath. “Let me win,” it says. “But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.”

As you travel around the country though, there’s something else you pick up too. People were really involved with the athletes in 2003.

For many, it was a recognition of ability for the first time, instead of an assumption of disability. And, for many, that recognition was part of the key to the support that the wider disability movement got in its campaign for more rights, and for better funding for essential services.

But is there a feeling abroad now, that the investment made, and awareness raised, in 2003 has resulted in a problem solved?

Again and again, I’ve met people who think that what the Games did in 2003 was to make it impossible to resist the demand for change. “Sure, isn’t the disability bill passed into law now?” I’ve been asked. “And haven’t all the waiting lists been eliminated?”

I wish it were so.

Despite all our wealth, and all the goodwill that exists in the community, the Government’s own figures show that 2,270 people with an intellectual disability are without services, or a major element of a service, such as residential or day services. A further 11,590 people are receiving services but require alternative, additional or enhanced services within the next five years. And don’t get me started on the inadequacy of the legislation.

In other ways, too, attitudes haven’t changed nearly enough.

Last Saturday, in one of the towns visited by the torch run, I met a lovely couple. I’d say they were getting on a bit in years. They have two adult sons, both with cerebral palsy. One of the boys can walk with support, and the other uses a wheelchair. We talked about how difficult it is, still, for either of the boys to access a hotel or a pub or a shop, and how impossible it is for them to access a beach. That family, who have, as the saying goes, done the State some service, have never been able to have a seaside holiday together, and probably never will.

Yes, the World Games in 2003 changed a lot. They opened eyes and hearts and minds, and the Special Olympics movement in Ireland, under the brilliant leadership of Mary Davis, has been seeking to build on that ever since.

I know, as a member of Special Olympics, we’ll reach our targets. But other targets, and rights, are even more important.

If we think we’ve solved all the problems, it’s time to think again. It’s time for the hearts and minds of those at the top to be opened again to change.