The Paralympics are coming to LA. But has the US done enough to guarantee success? | LA Paralympic Games 2028
AAlthough he failed just short in one of the most exciting events of the outdoor championships in American athletics last weekend, Miguel Jimenez-Vergara could still be satisfied with a pleasant performance.
In competition for the first time at the Famous Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, the 24-year-old won over 5000m tactical war with the fastest rolling chair runners in the United States. Upon entering the last lap, Jimenez-Vergara spaled a closely wrapped field with fierce acceleration that energizes the crowd. Only one competitor could take up the challenge: the paralympic gold medalist reigning Daniel Romanchuk. Jimenez-Vergara is always led by a wheel while they crossed the last turn to more than 20 mph; Romanchuk caught up in the last 50m and won with a tenth of a second.
It was an exhilarating show worthy of the framework of the big leagues. But Jimenez-Vergara rejected attempts to run it like a triumph.
“I just want to win,” he said. “I’m not here to absorb fans or take advantage of the atmosphere. I know you probably want me to say that I am excited to be in Hayward and get more visibility [for disabled athletes]. And we need more eyes on us. But for me, I will run in the parking lot. I just want to beat the guy next to me. I just want to be the best.
This sums up both the promise and traps of the historic weekend championship. For the first time, the United States presented American paralympic talents on the largest sport stage, side by side with their better-known and better paid Olympic teammates. It is a clear victory for Parasports Equity, which recognizes disabled competitors as supremely gifted athletes rather than acts of novelty.
But it is a largely symbolic victory, and late brilliantly. The achievement of the type of success for the hungry of Jimenez -Vergara – Global Dominance in Cartack – will require more than gestures splashing towards inclusion. It will take a level of money and commitment far beyond what Team USA previously invested in Parasports. There is an urgency to publish a high number of medals when the paralympic games come to American soil in Los Angeles in three years. But the weather is short and talking is cheap.
“Seeing integration occurring is really cool,” said sprinter Jarryd Wallace, a paralympian quadruple and long -standing defender of equity. “It shows how much growth has been. But to increase the heights even higher, we must continue to ask questions. No one really knows the right direction. We discover what needs are, what are the resources and opportunities. And I think it will catapult us towards places that we have never seen each other before. ”
The places we to have Given US parasport before can generously be described as a third rate. Until last year, the national championships and the paralympic trials were systematically organized on the tracks of the secondary and the community community which lacked accessibility accommodation for the athletes, the media branches for journalists and comfort of comfort for the public. The stands (if there were) were inevitably empty. The tracks themselves were often an embarrassment.
“The sites have not been so large in the past,” says Tatyana McFadden, one of the most recognizable stars of us and the winner of 22 paralympic athletics medals, an American record. “The long -term pits were not the right size. There have been holes in the track and not enough water for athletes. ” The national meeting of 2024 and the paralympic tests took place in first -rate facilities – but only after the Paralympians filed an official grievance after the national championships of 2023. In the future, it will be Hayward Field each year.
“It’s good when you can just go out and compete without worrying if there is a divot in your way,” explains McFadden. “It is good to be treated as elite athletes. We deserve this. “
American parathletes also deserve the same salary as their unabled peers, and they have made progress on this front – since 2021, the paralympic medal bonuses have been equivalent to the Olympic bonuses (they were in the fifth largest before). But performance -based remuneration in other major para events continues to delay. The same goes for allowances for travel, training, equipment and subsistence costs.
Given their relative shortage of resources, American paratrack athletes have compiled an admirable record of international success. Although they did not match the pre -eminence of their Olympic comrades – who led the world in the track medals (in the whole and gold) to all the Olympic Games since 1992 – the American Paralympians have won 212 track medals this century, more than each nation except China. They hold dozens of world records. It is an impressive big book, but other countries have caught up or put in advance during recent cycles. Since 2000, China has won twice as much paralympic track medals as the United States. Brazil has invested massively in Parasports since the reception of the 2016 Paralympic Games; Last summer, he almost equaled the United States team in the overall track medals and won the same golden number. Great Britain, Russia and European countries have largely expanded their parathletic recruitment and training initiatives. And almost all countries have unified their track programs by.
This organizational merger has formalized a de facto merger that has occurred for decades. American paralympic and Olympic athletes train regularly and travel together, share coaches and sponsors and consider themselves peers. “I moved to the Olympic training center in 2005, and Al Joyner was my trainer,” said April Holmes, a paralympic pioneer sprinter who is now an interim CEO of Safesport USA. “I trained with all his [Olympic] athletes. There was already a conversation at the time – “Why are our nationals not together?” The administration finally caught up what was going on on the track. »»
“The rest of the world has done so, and we should do it too,” adds Shotputter Josh Cinnamo, a world record and member of the Team USA athletes. “If we want to speak as if we were an organization, then do be an organization. “”
No one in the United States wants to see China dominate the American team on the Paralympic track in three years. But it can take Americans more than that to catch up. While high -level American paraathletes such as McFadden, Romanchuk, Ezra Frech, Hunter Woodhall and Brittni Mason can compete with anyone in the world, the American talent pipeline is far from being as productive on the paralympic side as on the Olympic side.
“We are missing a bridge between junior level competition and international level,” explains the prayer to retirement Amanda Mcgrory, a medalist of seven times which now provides color comments on the Paratrack coverage of NBC Universal. “After winning your state or regional championship, there is nowhere to go. Where do you find a coach? How do you make this jump from the competition of the school or collegial at the level of the world of the champion? There was not a lot of management for most people. This is where we really need support. ”
Jimenez-Vergara illustrates the obstacles to which the athletes are confronted. After having accumulated the national championships and the international medals of his adolescence, he waded for several years, training himself with sporadic coaching. “I was trying to arrive at Tokyo’s Paralympic Games, but I didn’t know how,” he said. “It just didn’t happen. I just didn’t have the speed.” He could have stuck if his former junior coach had not negotiated the American paralympic coach Joaquim Cruz. This finally led to a berth at the American Olympic and paralympic training center in Chula Vista, California, which had an immediate and spectacular impact.
“I stopped considering myself a runner in a wheelchair,” explains Jimenez-Vergara. “Being around all the sprinters, launchers, sweaters, I realized that I am a track athlete. It meant that I had to act as one. I had to start doing things that these other guys had been doing for years and years.”
He took advantage of the personal coach, the gymnasium, the nutritionist, the sport psychologist and other forms of support in which he had always lacked access. The effects became clear in 2023, when Jimenez-Vergara won a gold and two silver at the parapan American games, a standard test field for emerging American paralympians. This season, he organized a back and forth duel with his unique idol, Romanchuk, characterized by the tight finish of the 5000m of last weekend. By 2028, it can be ready to challenge a paralympic podium.
There are a lot of perspectives like Jimenez-Vergara which are still wading, and the USATF has not yet built a system to find and develop them. It will take an aggressive recruitment blitz for the United States to have a chance to run the Chinese.
“The United States has a model established on how to identify talents and get them to the next level,” said McGrory. “And I think it is reproducible on the paralympic side. China has done a very good job to discover and develop young talents. It makes it difficult to catch. But this is where the United States can help the United States.”
“USATF just needs to do what they do well,” adds Wallace. “They just need to look at who they are.”
Bringing the nationals of the Para track to Hayward Field was a necessary first step, but not sufficient. Team USA still has a lot of race to run.
