This last summer was full of Olympic news, from the river in Paris to the opening ceremonies, to the competition. But one side of the Olympics was very unrepresented in this coverage, the Paralympics. These are Olympic games for people with disabilities and have special events such as floor volleyball and blind soccer. However, unlike the regular Olympics, the US has no esteemed domination in the Paralympics.

The US sends many people to each Olympic game, and the Paralympics is no different with China being the only other country that can keep up with the number of players. However, this does not always produce results with the last games showing disappointment as the US only just finished in the top half of metals and mostly earned bronze. Other countries though such as China have been finding great success with almost as many gold medals as the US gained in total medals. So how has China found this success? China has invested more than any other country in training facilities and physical therapies for people with disabilities as proportionately they have more with their large population. This has made a solid base of disabled sports in China training people from elementary school whereas in most countries people don’t know about disabled sports till they are adults.

If the US wants this same domination that they have in the Olympics they ultimately will need to follow China’s footsteps and build their disabled sports complex from the ground up starting with younger children who have been disabled along with more training facilities and promotion of the sports.