Special Olympics: Is this a competition or what?

What is in the foreground at the Special Olympics World Games: sporting achievements and successes or the event including intercultural exchange and making the athletes visible? Reporter Uri Zahavi went in search of an answer and realized: Maybe no answer is the right one.

As a TV, social media and online reporter, I’m covering the Special Olympics World Games in Berlin – and I’m torn inside. That in advance. Every time I tell someone about my job at the World Games, I very quickly hear a question with a clear undertone: “You, how seriously can you actually take the event in terms of sport?” Or: “How much competition is there in the specials?” Or: “Isn’t it really just about intercultural exchange and inclusion … and sport is a complete rubbish?”

Everyone is celebrated at awards ceremonies

The core of the question is legitimate – of course always taking into account the wording. And now I come to my inner conflict or my problem. So far, my answer has been consistently: “I don’t know.” On the one hand, I sense positive vibes here from the very first second, a warm atmosphere and – in the best of all senses – largely “friendly” competition.

The last-placed person is often happy about his or her participant ribbon (which all non-medal winners receive) and celebrates the winner. A colleague described a situation to me in which a track and field athlete exchanged her gold medal for the bracelet for the eighth place finisher because she thought it was nicer. It is a harmonious togetherness that I have never experienced in this form at a sporting event.

competition instead of competition

On the other hand, I keep hearing that athletes don’t want to be reduced to these good vibes. They have trained hard for the World Games for years and want to be measured and recognized for their sporting achievements. “It’s about everything,” says Björn von Borstel, competition director of the athletics competitions, and adds. “It’s a mix of everything. It’s maybe 50 percent sport and 50 percent everything else.”

I learned here early on that I shouldn’t use the word “competition” in reporting – but instead use the word “competition”. After all, you wouldn’t compete for medals at the Special Olympics World Games battle. There is no official medal table.

“We’ll high five, then I’ll feel better”

“There’s competition behind it,” says Pauline Clauss. The 29-year-old competes in beach volleyball. Beach volleyball is played as a so-called “unified sport”. This means that people with and without disabilities form a team. Pauline is a unified partner, so lives without disabilities. “We actually want to go out here with a medal and win somehow. Of course, success plays a role. If you keep losing, it’s less fun.”

Nevertheless, precious metal is of course not the main motivation. It’s still fun, adds Pauline. And that brings “great rallies and moves” and not just victories. Kaya Schöbel also plays beach volleyball in one of the German teams – she is mentally handicapped. For the 22-year-old it is clear: the team wins and loses together. If things don’t go so well, “then we give each other high fives and then I feel better immediately.”

Incidentally, Kevin Waskowksy feels the same way. The 27-year-old plays in the German hockey team. After a defeat, he looks forward, but also to the side: “I think it’s so great how the people in the audience cheered us on here. We didn’t win now, but I wish we could just do that make it in the next game.”

topic of discussion classification

I think one of the great difficulties in evaluating the importance of athletic success is the huge range of different abilities that athletes have. During the so-called “classification” in the run-up to the Special Olympics World Games, they were assigned a skill level by their trainers. At the World Games themselves, these assessments were then checked by an official arbitral tribunal – the participants were then divided into small groups. These are then competed for the medals.

So people with similar abilities compete against each other. This should make the competition as fair as possible. So far so fair. In contrast, what is not fair at all: Nations that try to deliberately rank their athletes lower in order to increase the chances of a medal. This also happens at the Special Olympics World Games. But “of the 190 delegations that start here, that’s a handful at most,” puts Björn von Borstel into perspective. Attempts at fraud of this kind have rigorous consequences – up to and including disqualification.

“Why shouldn’t a Special Olympics athlete get a bonus?”

The discrepancy between self-perception and external perception of sporting achievements is striking to me at these World Games. While the athletes mostly come to terms with their results quickly, coaches and associations seem to attach great importance to success in isolated cases. From angry coaches on the sidelines to associations that even offer bonuses for medals and thus of course increase the pressure massively, everything is there.

There are also different perspectives on this. “It’s the most normal thing in the world when athletes win a medal, that there’s an award. Why not?” says Björn von Borstel. “They’re equal people like you and me. If we compete in track and field and win gold at the Olympics, there’s maybe $5,000 for it: Why shouldn’t a Special Olympics athlete get that?”

The magic of this event

So “how much competition is in the Special Olympics World Games?” I will have to resign myself to not getting a definitive answer and perhaps no definitive stance on it. But I learned from these games: It’s not bad at all. I saw so many happy faces, experienced so much empathy. In fact, at the Special Olympics World Games, everyone is a winner.

“Look at the Champions League final in football,” concludes Björn von Borstel. “The loser gets the medal hung around his neck and takes it off immediately. Or he doesn’t wear it at all. With us, the eighth place is also happy about his participant loop. So I ask myself: Which emotion is more expressive?” And that is exactly the magic of this event – whether with or without sporting success.

The schedule of the Special Olympic World Games in Berlin at a glance.