Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had recently proposed cutting the $17.6 million federal appropriation for Special Olympics. After the move received bipartisan criticism, President Trump said on Thursday he had “overridden my people” and that “the Special Olympics will be funded.”
Here are nine things you should know about the world’s largest sports organization for athletes with intellectual disabilities.
1. The mission of Special Olympics is to provide year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for the 200 million children and adults around the world with intellectual disabilities. (Athlete eligibility is based on a person’s primary disability. People with primary or exclusively physical disabilities are eligible for Paralympics.) The organization gives them “continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy and participate in a sharing of gifts, skills and friendship with their families, other Special Olympics athletes and the community.”
2. Special Olympics is for those who have an intellectual disability (ID), a term used when a person has certain limitations in cognitive functioning and skills, including communication, social, and self-care skills. According to the American Association of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, an individual has ID if he or she has an IQ less than 70-75, has significant limitations in two or more adaptive areas (skills that are needed to live, work, and play in the community, such as communication or self-care), and the condition manifests itself before the age of 18.
3. Special Olympics supports more than 5 million athletes, 1 million coaches and volunteers, and about 100,000 competitions each year. The program offers 32 Olympic-style individual and team sports in more than 170 countries. The list of sports and events includes alpine skiing, track and field, badminton, basketball, bocce, bowling, cricket, cross-country skiing, cycling, equestrian, figure skating, floorball, floor hockey, football (soccer), golf, gymnastics (artistic and rhythmic), handball, judo, kayaking, motor activity training program, netball, powerlifting, roller skating, sailing, short-track speed skating, snowboarding, snowshoe running, skiing: alpine and cross-country, softball, swimming (pool and open-water), table tennis, tennis, triathlon, and volleyball.
4. The idea for Special Olympics was conceived in the mid-1960s by Frank Hayden, who at the time was a researcher at the University of Western Ontario. To celebrate Canada’s centennial in 1967, Hayden proposed a national Summer Games for children with intellectual disabilities. Although that event never happened, his idea caught the attention of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the sister of President John F. Kennedy. (In June 1962, Shriver started a summer day camp for children and adults with intellectual disabilities at her home in Maryland to explore their capabilities in a variety of sports and physical activities.) On July 20, 1968, the Kennedy foundation and the Chicago Park District hosted the first International Special Olympics Summer Games. Hayden served as the executive director and was one of the three co-incorporators of Special Olympics.
5. The 1st International Special Olympics Summer Games were held at Soldier Field in Chicago. About 1,000 athletes with ID from 26 U.S. states and Canada competed. More than 200 events were offered, including broad jump, softball throw, 25-yard swim, 100-yard swim, high jump, 50-yard dash, and and water polo. Shriver pledged that more games would be held in 1970 and every two years thereafter in a “Biennial International Special Olympics.” In December 1971, the U.S. Olympic Committee gave Special Olympics official approval as one of only two organizations authorized to use the name “Olympics” in the United States, and in 1988 the organization was officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
6. In 1997, Special Olympics Healthy Athletes began offering free health screenings and education to Special Olympics athletes. Since then, the program has delivered more than 2 million free health screenings and trained more than 260,000 health professionals and students to treat people with ID. The program also offers health screening in eight areas: Fit Feet (podiatry); FUNfitness (physical therapy); Health Promotion (better health and well-being); Healthy Hearing (audiology); MedFest (sports physical exam); Special Olympics-Lions Clubs International Opening Eyes (vision); Special Smiles (dentistry); and Strong Minds (emotional well-being). Special Olympics is the largest healthcare provider for people with intellectual disabilities worldwide.
7. The organization also implements Special Olympics Unified Schools program, defined as pre-schools, primary schools, secondary schools, college or universities that offer Unified Sports opportunities (i.e., bringing together athletes with and without intellectual disabilities as teammates) to students all across the globe. Unified Schools programming is designed to facilitate Special Olympics Unified Sports, provide classroom and community experiences that reduce bullying and exclusion, promote healthy activities, combat stereotypes and negative attitudes, eliminate hurtful language in schools, and engage young people in activities that lead to improved behavior and school climate.
8. On October 2004, Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed into law the “Special Olympics Sport and Empowerment Act.” The purpose of the law is to “provide assistance to Special Olympics to support expansion of Special Olympics and development of education programs and a Healthy Athletes Program . . .” The law authorizes the Secretary of Education and the Secretary of State to award grants to, or enter into contracts or cooperative agreements with, Special Olympics to promote the expansion of the games, and authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to do the same to promote the Healthy Athletes program.
9. In an article in the Journal of Disability and Religion, Nick J. Watson argues that Special Olympians can sometimes be a “prophetic sign” of God’s kingdom, showing us how weakness and humility can expose the idols in our age of modern sports:
Over the years, theologians have to varying degrees suggested that persons with disabilities, in particular ID, are a prophetic sign to the age of modernity and the present era that exalts self, celebrity, wealth, outward beauty, the intellect, success and the need to be perfect in all that we do. These cultural values reflect what we think about ourselves, who we are—our identity and self-worth—and thus how we think and act towards those who do not exhibit these qualities.
Watson says that sportspeople with ID and Special Olympics, are “arguably one prophetic sign, not a panacea, to the modern sporting institution that is an idol for many athletes, fans, and coaches.”
