In 2020, the Olympics and Paralympic Games have met their end. Athletes came back to Taiwan with nationals cheers and applause. But thereis a long-standing problem, the community of athletes was neglected. Thus “leave the country happily and come back gloriously. ” is a strange scene for them. A visually impaired athlete, Chuan- Hui, Yang, has decided to retire after participating in the Tokyo Paralympic Games. He decided to devote himself to running a sports massage studio.
Having gone on the field for more than decades, Chuan- Hui, Yang highly understands the difficulty of disabled athletes. When talking about cultivating an athlete with disabilities and temporary deficit in manpower or resources, he has a lot of feelings. As an experienced athlete, Chuan- Hui, Yang is still full of enthusiasm about sports. However, he chose to retire after the Paralympic Games in Tokyo. Long jump with visual impaired is risky. If the jump doesn’t land into the sandbox, people might sprain their ankles or even be paralyzed. Chuan- Hui, Yang used to think he was too young to worry about getting hurt, but now, as a father raising two kids and the third kid is about to born. He couldn’t keep the same natural and unstrained attitude as before. Even more, in 2018 in the Asian Disabled Athletics Grand Prix in Beijing, he got hurt when he didn’t land into the sandbox two straight times. His left and right ankles got sprained one after another. The injury didn’t fully recover till now, which left a serious trauma in his heart.
Working as hard as Olympians, the resources or prizes for Paralympians are far less than the formers, which makes Chuan- Hui, Yang feel he is ignored. Besides facing the lack of resources, cultivating entry-level athletes had also encountered lots of problems. Having taught at Taichung Minicipal Taichung Special Education School for The Visually impairedfor several years, Chuan- Hui, Yang pointed out that the deficiency of training resources made coaches have to raise funds and look for resources on their own. This exhausting job also ended up with no coach successors.
In addition to a not valued sports environment, the weak employment environment is also an obstacle for disabled athletes to move forward. Compared to Olympians with abundant support from corporations and more celebrity endorsement opportunities, it seems that disabled athletes have to walk this road lonely and it's hard to make a living. To improve the working environment of athletes with disabilities and allow athletes to be devoted to training with no worries, Athletics coach from Taichung Minicipal Taichung Special Education School for The Visually impaired Mr.Fu-Sheng, Chang appealed to the government to match the corporations with disabled athletes to make sponsorship.
In recent years, the government has promoted life-adjustment education to encourage the disabled to exercise. Chuan- Hui, Yang considered that “encourage exercise” and “cultivate athletes” were different concepts and they shouldn’t be discussed together. Instead, he suggested that the government should set up another department to cultivate athletes and ensure they have enough professional resources.
The number of Paralympians are decreasing yearly. With an urgent shortage of athletes, we cannot figure the problem out by raising the prize bonus but we need to focus on education and career plan for Paralympians.
Fu-Sheng, Chang who had led athletes to compete six times in Paralympics, said, “Because of the trend of Olympics, Paralympians this year were treated better. However, I think it shouldn’t be like this and it should be a regular situation.” He hoped that the public and the government’s attention on Paralympians could last long and stable rather than a flash in the pan. We should support those athletes and let them shine on the field.
