The top sporting event for athletes with disabilities opens in the Japanese capital on Tuesday, after a year-long pandemic delay. A total of 22 sports will be contested at the Games, including new additions badminton and taekwondo. Miki Matheson, a gold medallist at the 1998 Winter Paralympics in Nagano, says medals don't matter. It's all about helping people change their way of thinking.
Now part of the Japanese Paralympic management team, Miki Matheson has three gold medals and one silver of her own. But she insists that "the success of the Paralympics is not just whether athletes hit the mark or win a lot of medals.
"The Paralympics won't succeed if we can't feel that (people with disabilities) can go out more comfortably and that people around them can change their way of thinking."
Matheson insists the Paralympics has a mission that goes beyond sport.
"I think the Paralympics is just one springboard, but it can play a major role" in removing barriers, she said.
Matheson, who is also a member of the Japan Paralympic Committee, wants the Games to be more than a one-time boost.
"What we truly have to do is to continue this momentum," she said.
"The end of the closing ceremony can't be the end of it."
French names to look out for . . .
Marie-Amélie Le Fur would surely agree that medals aren't everything. She already has eleven, including two golds collected in Rio five years ago in the long jump and the 400m.
But these Tokyo Games are special, because they'll be her last. Now 32, she has already said she won't compete in Paris and had warned that she's hoping to go out in a blaze of glory.
Stéphane Houdet also has the medal habit, having emerged from each of the last three Paralympic tennis competitions with a place on the podium. He'll be putting the doubles title he won in Rio with Nicolas Peifer on the line, as well as sharing the flag-carrying duties for the French squad with Sandrine Martinet.
Un invité de marque voyage avec les para tireurs sportifs. Le président de @Paris2024 sera aux Jeux Paralympiques de #Tokyo2020 et soutiendra nos Bleus 🇫🇷#AllezLesBleus | #UneSeuleEquipe pic.twitter.com/dPvpPud54R
— Equipe France (@EquipeFRA) August 23, 2021
The team representing 82 million people
For just the second time in Paralympic history, after Rio in 2016, Tokyo will welcome a refugee team.
On Tuesday, the team's chef de mission Ileana Rodriguez said the six Paralympians represent "82 million people who are displaced around the world" and want to send a message of hope.
"We're very grateful for the countries that welcome refugees and we encourage countries that can support refugees to do it," Rodriguez said, adding "our hearts go to all the people in Afghanistan".
Coronavirus casts a long shadow
Athletes will face challenging conditions, with strict health rules requiring daily testing and a ban on going anywhere except their accommodation, training sites and venues.
There will be no cheering crowds, with almost all spectators barred from events as Japan's nationwide new infections topped 25,000 in recent days.
Some Paralympians face additional risk because underlying health conditions make them more vulnerable to severe illness with Covid-19, or because they work in close proximity to assistants and can't keep socially distant from them.
But, as Miki Matheson points out, "for Paralympians, facing adverse challenges and pursuing what is possible for them is nothing special."
