Ahead of the Rio Paralympics in 2016, British television network Channel 4 ran an advert called "we're the superhumans". It's a common theme you'll hear as the Paris Paralympics gets underway; these athletes being called superhuman.
It's way off the mark, though. In popular comic culture, superhumans are either born with select advantages or are genetically modified by careful experiment or freak accident. There's an element of luck to this, of circumstance, for these abilities being formed that are superior to the regular human condition.
None of that is true for a Paralympian - and that's why it's such a disservice to call them that. Peter Parker didn't suffer polio when he was a year old and get put in a wheelchair as a child. He didn't grow up in a small village in rural Gujarat being told 'You're a girl, and you can't do anything. What will you do when you grow up?' He didn't have to depend on his guardians carrying him everywhere. Bhavina Hasmukhbhai Patel did. She went through all of that and became India's most decorated table tennis player.
There was nothing accidental about her rise. To go from being sat in a wheelchair to dominating a sport which demands constant side-to-side motion, where constant in-out feet movement is replaced by stretching from a seated position, takes a whole new kind of determination. Radioactive spiders have nothing on sheer human will.
Think of what these Paralympians do, what they have gone through, how they pull off such impressive sporting feats. Imagine, for instance, bench-pressing any kind of weight without being able to drive through your feet, without any stability from the lower half of your body. Now imagine being a 48kg woman bench-pressing 94kg and doing that with your legs (which you cannot use) strapped to the bench, lifting this mammoth weight using pure upper body power. That's what Sakina Khatun did to win the 2024 national championship.
Afflicted by polio at a young age, she went through four surgeries to survive it, took up swimming as rehab, and from there power lifting -- where she was taunted by widespread (and easily expressed) sentiments that the sport was for men, that her shoulders would get too manly. She's now a Commonwealth Games bronze medalist, an Asian Para Games silver medalist, a two-time Paralympian. And she has the shoulders of a warrior goddess.
Or consider for a moment that you're a soldier in the Indian Army and one day, in an operation along the LOC, you lose a limb to a landmine blast. Thigh down, they amputate your left leg. You convalesce from that, recover from the depression of the realization that you will never be the same again, shake yourself up from the paper-pushing admin role you thought would be the rest of your life and become an elite para-athlete.
The sheer strength of mind required to go from the height of human physical prowess to losing a limb and then and then owning that new life. Hokato Hotozhe Sema did all that, becoming an expert shot putter. Amputated leg strapped to his seat, he hurls that chunk of iron around 14m when at his best -- quite remarkable considering this is a sport where power is generated by the explosive turn, the legs driving latent velocity through to your upper body. Sema has none of that but he goes into Paris an Asian Para Games bronze medalist.
Sumit Antil was 17 when the bike he was on was hit by a speeding truck, and he had to get his left leg amputated. A few years later, in college, he was introduced to para-athletics. Six years after the accident, he was winning Paralympics gold in Tokyo, breaking the world record three times en-route. He's also a two-time world champion and won Asian Para Games gold last year with a ridiculous throw of 73.29m, the best of any para thrower ever (silver went to a throw that fell nine whole metres short).
Just how good is it, you ask? Think about all we know on javelin, all that Neeraj Chopra has taught us about the importance of the run-up, of generating speed, and remember that Antil is doing it on a leg and a prosthetic; that 73.92m would have seen him finish 7th in the recently held Federation Cup won by Neeraj. It's mind-boggling.
The extraordinary physical strain to compete at these Game is one thing; the mental barriers all these athletes cross is something else. Would you, for instance, step onto a judo mat blindfolded? Get involved in a sport that involves the flinging of a fellow human being over your shoulder when you can't really see that much? Kapil Parmar did. Having suffered a severe electrical shock as a child, he gradually lost his sight almost completely over the course of a few years. But as he lost one sense, he developed others - and also developed the audaciousness and courage to do what he does. That's athleticism at a plane most of us wouldn't believe exists.
Have you ever heard of an armless archer? Wouldn't you need arms to use the bow and arrow? Not if you're Sheetal Devi. Born with severely underdeveloped arms due to a rare medical condition called Phocomelia, she tried getting prosthetics, but they wouldn't fit. That didn't stop her: she trained her legs to hold the bow (something she couldn't even lift initially), adapted to a specially made shoulder releaser that would be triggered by her chin and mouth and used her incredible upper body strength (gained by climbing trees using her legs) to become an expert. She goes into the Paris Games as a double gold (and one silver) Asian Para Games medalist. One of those golds was won in a moment that will forever be etched in Indian sporting history.
This is just six of them, though, and India is sending 84 (across 12 sports) to Paris this time. Their stories are the same, this victory of indomitable, very human, will. As are the stories of the 4400 athletes from 167 countries (across 22 sports). Look at these athletes, their stories, their feats. Calling them superhuman is to write off the very human struggle they've gone through, the physical pain, the psychological trauma, and undervaluing just where they have all reached.
Especially in India, where it comes from fighting through a system that's at best apathetic. Not only do they have to fight their own bodies, but red-tape, lethargy and so much more. Routinely athletes struggle with everything from reimbursements (after having had to pay from their own pockets for international competitions), to simply being able to participate in enough events -- even domestically.
As recently as 2021, the Para Athletics Nationals was plagued by a host of issues: the host city was changed with four days to go, and this mid-pandemic. The men's shot put events were held with the aid of flashlights and a few car headlights. One of the stadiums (Bengaluru's main sporting venue, the Kanteerava) had a wooden board laid over an uneven surface by way of wheelchair access at one entrance. Severely underprepared, athletes with increased vulnerabilities were placed in a risky environment, pandemic-wise. It was so poor that the International Paralympic Committee asked the Indian counterpart (PCI) for an explanation. Not that it helped. Earlier this year, the Sports Ministry suspended the PCI for misgovernance issues.
The new committee, headed by Paralympic great Devendra Jhajharia has promised a revamp but as of today, infrastructure remains hopelessly inaccessible for the most part, and specialised coaching limited to certain pockets. While select Paralympians get help due to being included in the TOPS scheme and cash awards have increased for those winning international medals, most para-athletes in the country struggle to do what they do day-in, day-out. To climb up to a level where someone will take notice is almost impossibly hard.
There's always hope for change, but in India the Paralympian's journey is much more fraught than the Olympian's (and that one's not easy, either). It's one driven by pure personal determination and the guidance and help of those few dedicated to sport, to improving the life of these athletes. Superhuman? It doesn't even begin to describe them.