If you find yourself watching the Paralympics over the next 12 days and feeling badly for the athletes — don’t. The men and women from around the globe who will be competing may have been born with unfortunate birth defects or lost limbs in tragic accidents, but they are competing for medals like every other Olympian you have already watched at the London Olympics. And if you didn’t already see the athletes in the Paralympics as intense competitors, maybe the ad above that Channel 4 in Britain has been running will help.
“Forget everything you thought you knew about strength,” the ad that NBC News pointed out reads. “Forget everything you thought you knew about humans. It’s time to do battle. Meet the Superhumans.”
On second thought, maybe they aren’t like all the other athletes you watched in the London Olympics. Unlike your average Olympian, Paralympians have had to not only fight their way through the competition to qualify for the world stage, but also battle their way through life. If you can’t accept that the Paralympics are simply another version of Olympic competition and not a lesser version, perhaps a video with troops getting blown up, cars flipping over and players getting knocked out of their wheelchairs while playing “Murderball” — all to the tune of Public Enemy — will change your mind.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about, thank you for letting me be myself,” a fan wrote on the Vimeo page for the ad campaign. “Public Enemy never sounded better. It’s a great soundtrack for our … lives whether we’re Olympians or not.”
How can wheelchair rugby not interest you? Are we going to see crazy stories like this one or this one throughout the Paralympics? Probably not, but there will still be plenty to keep us interested. “Meet the Superhumans” serves as a tremendous reminder of that.
