Olympic fans tuning into the Paralympics for the first time are faced with an unfamiliar sight: Team USA lagging behind in the medal table.
While US Olympians have been dominating medal counts and airwaves for decades, their Paralympic colleagues have had far more modest success. So far in the 21st century, the US has only failed to top the Olympic medal table once, but its average place in the Paralympic medals table since 2000 is fourth. Ukraine, a nation with a population around a tenth that of the US and a GDP less than 1% that of the US, has beaten Team USA in two of the last three Paralympic Games.
“Future potential athletes have no role models to show them what they are capable of at a time in their lives when most of society is telling them they are incapable of just about anything useful,” Ian Brittain, an academic at Coventry University and an expert in the study of Paralympic sport, told CNN. “Sponsors are put off investing because their brand or product won’t get the necessary coverage, however successful the athlete is.
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