The handicapped Olympics is coming to Los Angeles. But did the United States do enough to ensure success? | Disabled star-news.press/wp

AAlthough he was short in one of the most exciting events in the United States and Field Championships at the end of last week, Miguel Jiminies Vivgarra is still satisfied with the performance of the crowd.

For the first time in the famous Hawaiard field in Eugene, Oregon, the 24 -year -old launched a tense tactical war of more than 5,000 meters with the fastest duties of wheelchairs in the United States. Upon entering the last lap, Jimenez-Vergara evaporated a field tightly packed with a fierce acceleration that activates the crowd. Only one competitor can rise to this challenge: Daniel Romanshuk, who holds the gold medal for the disabled. Jimenez-Vergara is still led by a wheel while driving during the final turn of more than 20 miles per hour; Romashuk caught him in the last game and won the tenth of the second.

It was a pleasant offer, and it deserves to be prepared. But Jimenez-Vergara rejected attempts to recycle it as a victory.

He said, “I just want to win.” “I am not here to accommodate the masses or absorb the atmosphere. I know that you may want to say that I am excited to be in Hayard and get more vision (for disabled athletes). We need more eyes on us. But for me, I will preceded the parking lot. I just want to overcome the man next to me. I just want to be better.”

This summarizes both the promise and the historical championship for the weekend. For the first time, USA Track and Field has offered American Paralympic talents at the largest stage of this sport, along with her well -known Olympic colleagues. It is a clear victory over ParasPorts, which recognizes the disabled competitors as very talented athletes instead of grandmother’s work.

But it is a great symbolic victory, and was greatly affected. Achieving the type of success from the Jimneyz-Vergara Award for Global Hegemony in Paratrack-more than wonderful gestures towards the listing. It will take a level of money and commitment to what is further invested in the PARASPORTS team. There is a urgency to spread the number of high medals when the handicapped Olympics comes to the American soil in Los Angeles three years from now. But the time is short, and the talk is cheap.

“Seeing integration is really really great,” said Sprinter Jarryd Wallace, which is four times and has long been caused by fairness. “It shows the extent of the existing growth. But in order to make the highlands climb higher, we have to continue to ask questions. No one really knows the right direction yet. We discover what the needs are, and what resources and opportunities are. And I think they will put us in places that we have not seen before before.”

We are Ownership I saw the United States Parasport before it can be generously described as a third degree. Until last year, the national championships and trials were routinely organized in secondary schools and the community college that lack the places of access to athletes, the media linked to reporters and amenities for the public. The terraces (if there was any) were definitely empty. The same paths were often embarrassing.

“The places were not great in the past,” says Tatiana McFaden, one of the most stars in Barack, who won 22 medals and medals, a record in the United States, a record in the United States. “The long drilling was not the right size. There were holes in the path and not enough for athletes.” The 2024 national trials were held in the first-class facilities-but only after the disabled people made the official grievance after the 2023 national championship. To move forward, the Haward field will be every year.

“It is great when you can get out and compete without worrying if there is a divot in your lane,” says McFadin. “It is good to treat like elite athletes. We deserve this.”

American Parathlite also deserves the same wages as their uncomfortable peers, and they have made some progress on that front-since 2021, the handicaps of the disabled medals were equivalent to the Olympic rewards (the fifth was previously). But performance -based compensation in the events of the other major paragraph is still backward. The same applies to travel, training, equipment and living expenses.

Looking at the scarcity of their relative resources, the athletes in Paratrack collected an impressive record of international success. Although they did not coincide with the superiority of their Olympic comrades – who led the world in the path medals (in general and gold) in all the Olympic Games since 1992 – the American Paralympics brought 212 medals this century, more than each country except China. They hold dozens of world records. It is an impressive professor’s book, but other countries were joining or progressing in recent sessions. Since 2000, China has won twice the number of handicrafts, such as the United States. Brazil has invested extensively in ParasPorts since the 2016 Holding Olympics has been hosted; Last summer, he was identical to the United States of America in the total track medals and won the same number of gold. Great Britain, Russia and European countries have expanded employment and training initiatives in the field of employment. Almost every country has united their programs and path programs capable of the body in one governing body-a step taken by the United States late this year, when the American track and the square absorbed the Paratrack suite.

This regulatory integration has made the official character to the actual fusion of decades. American and Olympic athletes routinely train their training and travel together, and the participation of coaches and sponsors, and they consider each other as a peer. “I moved to the Olympic Training Center in 2005, and Al -Jwin was a coach,” says April Holmes, the runner of the runner who is now the temporary CEO of SafeSport Usa. “I trained with all athletes (Olympic). There was already a conversation at the time -” Why is our citizens not together? “Finally, the administration captured what was happening on the path.”

“The rest of the world was doing it, and we should also do it,” he added. ” “If we are talking like us, one organization, let us be He is One organization. “

No one in the United States wants to see China dominates the United States of America team on the path of the disabled three years ago. But it may take longer than that to catch up. While the first -class Paracelette like McFadden, Romanchuk, Ezra Frech, Hunter Woodhall and Brittni Mason can compete with anyone in the world, the talent pipeline in America is not anymore on the Olympic side as on the Olympic side.

“We miss a bridge between the novice and international level competition,” says Amanda McGurry, a retired pensioner, a seven -time medal that now offers a colored comment on the Paratrack coverage of NBC Universal. “After you win your states or state or regional championships, there is no place you go. Where do you find a coach? How can you jump from this high school or collective competition to the level of global heroic? There was not much directions for most people. This is where we really need some support.”

Jimnez-Vergara explains the obstacles facing athletes. After the accumulation of national championships and international medals in adolescence, he stumbled for several years, and trained alone with intermittent training. “I was trying to reach the Tokyo Olympics, but I didn’t know how,” he says. “It didn’t happen. I didn’t have speed.” Perhaps he remained stuck if his old young coach did not mediate at the forefront of the American disabled path coach Joaquim Cruz. This ultimately led to a berth in the American Olympic Training Center in Chola Vista, California, which had an immediate and dramatic effect.

“I stopped watching myself as just a wheelchair contestant,” explains Jiminiz Vivgarra. “To be about all hostilities, archers, and jumping men, I realized that I am a sports player.

Benefit from the personal coach, gym, nutritionist, sports psychology, and other forms of support that he always was lacking. The antiquities became clear in 2023, when Jiminiz Vivgarra won gold and two silver in the American ParaPan games, a standard type that proves that young people are in the United States. This season made a back and forth match with one time, Romanchuk, who describes the narrow end at 5,000 meters at the end of last week. By 2028, it may be ready to appeal the disabled platform.

There are a lot of possibilities such as Jimenez-Vergara who are still there, and USAF has not built a system to find and develop it. It will require an aggressive recruitment of the United States in order for me to have the opportunity to run Chinese.

“The United States of America has a firmly form and field of how to define talents and connect them to the next level,” McGariri says. “I think this can be repeated on the Olympic side of the disabled. China has truly good detection and development of young talents. It makes it difficult to capture. But this is where the American path and field can help.”

“Usatf only needs to do what they do well,” he added. “They just need to rely on who they are.”

Bringing the track citizens to Hayouard Field was a necessary first step, but not enough. TEAM USA still has a lot of the remaining running race.