How California can prepare to host the first Paralympics games on the West Coast

The Tokyo 2020 Paralympics ended last month, but California will be on center stage in 2028, when the Paralympics come to Los Angeles.

World records, incredible personalities and world-class talent were displayed in Tokyo. The U.S. men’s wheelchair basketball team won its second gold medal in a row; the U.S. women’s wheelchair basketball team won bronze; the U.S. sit-down women’s volleyball won gold; swimmers Anastasia Pagonis and Jessica Long won gold in swimming; U.S. quad rugby finished with a silver; long jumper Lex Gillette won another silver; and Tatyana McFadden added to her long list of Paralympic medals.

The Paralympics — “para-” meaning parallel to the Olympics, not paralyzed or paraplegic — are the pinnacle of competition for athletes with disabilities. Californians have always made a name for themselves as champions of equity and civil rights. From San José State alumni Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists on the Olympic podium to former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refusing to stand during the national anthem, Californians have dared to use their platform to fight oppression in the United States.

Similarly, California has been a leader in the disability movement for decades. Sit-ins in San Francisco and Berkeley were monumental for our community.

Seventy-five percent of the Tokyo-bound U.S. Olympic Team hailed from university programs. The top three participating universities were Stanford, UCLA and UC Berkeley. So where are the California powerhouses for disabled athletes? Unfortunately, the vast majority of adaptive athletes from California are not able to compete at their home state’s colleges.

There are 16 universities in the U.S. that provide an elite, intercollegiate-level competition specifically for disabled athletes. Of those 16, there’s one in California. A majority of competing collegiate Paralympians come from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which has a long-standing, national-title-winning collegiate adaptive sport program. After that, major groups of competitors come from the University of Arizona, University of Wisconsin at Whitewater and University of Texas at Arlington, all of which have dedicated disability sport programming.

Approximately 15% of the world’s population lives with a disability — around 1 billion people. A new campaign, We The 15, helps to put that number into perspective and is fighting to end discrimination against the disability community globally. There are 40 million people living in California, which means approximately 6 million are living with a disability in our state. They deserve more opportunities to participate in collegiate athletics if California wants to be a global leader in adaptive sports.

Why does this matter? The Paralympics are set to have their first appearance ever on the West Coast for the 2028 Los Angeles Games. If Olympic powerhouses like Stanford University, the University of Southern California and the University of California system provide more adaptive sport programming, more Paralympians will represent California and set the standard for equity and inclusion at the collegiate level.

We have world-class technology, elite innovation, talented athletes and the best universities in the world. California has an incredible opportunity.

The Paralympic games are not just elite competition but are also an example to the world that all people deserve fair treatment. London, Rio and Tokyo received rave reviews for highlighting the Paralympic games at the same level as the Olympics. California must “take the baton” and do its part by showing that adaptive sports are important to us.