Oh man, the Globe and Mail isn't making this boycott easy! Front sports-page coverage of both wheelchair rugby and wheelchair racing - I just had to peek!
Chantal Petitclerc, one of the coolest people I've ever had the pleasure of interviewing, is breaking world records and scooping up gold medals right and left. And in rugby, the intense Canadian-US rivalry - which I hope you know from the "Murderball" documentary - is back in the spotlight again.
I applaud the Globe and Mail for putting this on the front page of the sports section, where it belongs. Writing about disability sports in the US, this is the coverage I always heard about. Athletes always told me that other countries gave the Paralympics their due; it's so great to see it with my own eyes.
US coverage, long nonexistent, has gotten a bit better. The New York Times kept some of its writers in Beijing, and has converted their Olympics blog to a Paralympics blog. (Check out Petitclerc after winning two gold medals in 90 minutes!) My sister-in-law, who comments here as "mkk", sent me a screen shot of the Times front page with a big colour photo of the US wheelchair basketball team, and the story was, thankfully, in sports. The hometown papers are still running the human-interest stories on local disabled athletes, but even they seem more straightforward and less sappy than they used to be. Progress!
And now back to my boycott.
No comments:
Post a Comment