SEPTEMBER 5, 2025 | OPINION | By Kole Petersen (Opinion Copy Editor)
This summer, for the first time in American history, disabled and able-bodied athletes competed alongside one another at the same national championship event. From July 31 through Aug. 3, the United States’ top track and field athletes competed together in the newly titled United States Track & Field Outdoor & Para National Championships at the world-renowned Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore. An incredible crowd of athletics fans was able to watch both para and non-para athletes at the same meet, with para events getting significant coverage. Ezra Frech, a two-time Paralympic gold medalist, described the event as “the precipice of something” for what para sports mean to the average American sports fan.
“People are naturally interested in my disability, and they’re naturally interested in disability in sports,” Frech told Owen Murray for TrackTown USA. “It’s just not exposed to enough people.”
And it was not just the para-athletes who were excited; able-bodied athletes were also enthusiastic about competing alongside all the top track and field athletes in the nation. Rudy Winkler, the American record holder in the hammer throw, said, “It’s really great that it’s all together now… It’s like, if you’re a track fan, we should all be together anyway.”
Both Frech and Winkler’s positive projections were affirmed by the event’s success; NBC’s coverage garnered an average of 1.2 million viewers globally, reportedly the highest viewership for a para athletics competition since last year’s Paralympics. Although the widespread favorability of a combined athletics event is amazing to see, it also makes it all the more depressing that we had to wait until just last month for such a competition to occur.
In the United States — and most other nations — para athletes do not gain nearly the same recognition as their able-bodied counterparts. A significant reason for this disparity is that para athletes rarely get the opportunity to compete at the same meet as non-disabled athletes. For instance, the Paralympics and the World Para Athletics Championships for all sports have always taken place separately from the Olympics and World Championships, with the para event being contested weeks after the able-bodied event. The Para Swimming World Series is a completely separate competition from the more well-known TYR Pro Swim Series, and the World Para Athletics European Championships commonly take place in different countries than the European Athletics Championships.
Along with the temporal and physical separation of para and non-para athletics, para sports suffer from a substantial chasm in marketing and visibility. As an example, the media coverage between the Olympics and Paralympics differs to an almost imperceptible level. Every Olympic cycle, the Olympics receive between 150 to 200% more media coverage than the Paralympics. During the 2022 Beijing Games, there were 400,000 online articles about the Olympics, but only 11,600 covering the Paralympics. On the World Athletics website, para sports events are not even listed on the competition calendar page, nor are they shown under the events tab of the USA Swimming website. Commercials leading up to an Olympic Games almost always feature able-bodied athletes, making the average person forget that the Paralympics and disabled athletes exist. It was only with individual para athletes’ use of social media — most notably that of Ezra Frech, Anastasia Pagonis and Hunter Woodhall — that participants were able to generate exposure and enthusiasm for their athletic abilities and spur record-setting viewership of the Paris Paralympics.
It should not be the job of para athletes alone to market their sports and events. The International Paralympic Committee and the administrative bodies of all competitive sports should dedicate much more effort to promoting, including and celebrating para sports. The current strategy that defines the state of para athletics is akin to a “separate but equal” mindset; para athletes are allowed to compete on national and international stages, but the structure and promotion of these events inherently prioritizes them below able-bodied athletes. The prefix “para” is supposed to indicate that para sports are parallel to able-bodied sports, but two things cannot be parallel if they do not exist structurally alongside one another. Merely having equivalent governing bodies and competitions does not undo the centuries of ableism experienced by disabled people and the societal predisposition to ignoring disabled achievement. To ensure that para athletics is accepted and enjoyed by a wider fanbase, para athletes must be given more opportunities to compete alongside able-bodied athletes.
I have been lucky enough to compete at two Southern Zone Age Group Championships for swimming. I had amazing experiences at both of these competitions, making memories that I will cherish for the rest of my life. The fact that para swimmers were able to compete alongside able-bodied swimmers was a large reason these events had such an impact on me. In many cases, my South Texas team cheered on our para athletes louder than anyone else, not because of a sense of obligation, but owing to a shared feeling of gratitude that everyone in our community was being represented and seen. Because of intentional inclusion, the levels of respect, camaraderie and appreciation that I gained through this relatively small-scale meet significantly outweighed those that I experienced when I competed at Junior Nationals, a much larger competition. This goes to show that combining para and non-para athletics does not simply generate handouts for disabled athletes, but benefits everyone who participates in sport.
Sadly, despite the impressive number of perspectives and stories similar to mine, there has been some online discourse criticizing the combined format of Track and Field Nationals. Some people believe that adding para athletes will do nothing for the sport that they participate in, that para athletes are completely different from able-bodied athletes and thus must compete separately, and that no one actually cares about para athletes. These arguments are not only horrifically ableist, but also fails to realize the intended goals of para athletics and sport itself. Para sports were established to allow disabled athletes to compete at the same level as able-bodied athletes and separating their events is inherently antithetical to this mission. Sports should allow everyone to participate at the same level of competition, no matter their creed, background or disability, and separating competition in any way inhibits the humanistic nature of sports. Thus, combining para and non-para athletics is an easy, intuitive, non-intrusive way to create a more equitable experience for para athletes, improve the sporting experience for able-bodied athletes, increase competition visibility for spectators and improve connectedness for everyone involved in sports.