paralympians in protest by Kerry - Monday, 27 August 2012, 11:20 AM

For those of you who are interested, the paralympians at London 2012 have taped over the logos of the corporates such as Nike and Adidas in a protest about sponsorship, These companies are among those with a poor record of sponsorship among paralympic athletes.

A simple yet important statement in a world of significant inequality! Given the money that is poured into the global sporting arena....

For more information:

http://www.theage.com.au/national/off-your-marks-athletes-block-brands-in-protest-20120825-24tl6.html

in lack of a 'like' button i just gotta say "like".

I'm 'liking' too! Hopefully brands will see this as great publicity and jump onboard to support these athletes.

But unfortunately this is not just about disabled athletes. Women in sport receive hardly any sponsorship at all. In Australia approx 8% of the sport coverage is of female sports, less than horse racing which sits at 10%.

All Olympic athletes who do not have a big profile or play a big sport would really struggle and pay for most of it themselves. As the article points out, its all about bang for your buck ie media coverage and viewer numbers. If these athletes want funding they need to be strategic and sell their strengths (ie clean image) and become brand ambassadors.

My husband owns a sponsorship consultancy and weekly get requests from all kinds of athletes desperately in need of funding, meanwhile drunken footy players get money thrown at them.

For this to change we need to change our habits too! By viewing and supporting athletics and other sports that dont get the media coverage and funding they deserve.

Great point about changing our habits Kristin, the opening ceremony for the paralympics is 5:20m Thurs morning ...

Full support of the protest...Yes, this world is full of unfairness/inequality though so much is done to minimise this gap but yet its seems so far apart..

Good on the athletes. I heard this morning that the British press will report the Paralympics results in the ‘Sports’ section of their papers this time rather than the ‘Special Interest’ section where they were reported in the past. Small steps!

Again, where is the 'like'-button!

Very good article, but I think the problem is much simpler than this. The reason why physically challenged atheletes receive fewer funding is because less people have any interest in what they do and what their achievements are (because subconsciously we regard them as being biologically imperfect, therefore undesirable). The reason that I just gave appears to be such an obvious answer which makes me wonder 'why do we even get heated up over this discussion?'

Society is ugly, the way the world is constructed is ugly. Look up youtube and Justin Bieber is more popular than Osho or Fritjof Capra.

Going back to our discussion, I went through an article at Mx (the free Melbourne magazine) and read that journalists are given strict guidelines about reporting the event in paralympian Games. They are not allowed to use words such as "superhuman" or "extraordinary", because it will give the impression that there is a lower expectation to begin with (seriously, I thought this was a joke, we are so afraid of being politically incorrect that we become so unnatural and we dont speak the truth anymore, it's making me sick).

Druken footy players get money thrown at them, just as nasty phony reality TV shows break the charts! There’s a twisted sense of what’s entertaining in Western Culture; and what’s entertaining is what sells, unfortunately.
I have to agree with Gibran; there’s no interest/entertainment value in watching the Paralympics, so of course there is no funding. The purpose of funding is advertising, so of course it goes to the sports with the most views.

Gibran, I’m sad to admit that I’ve youtubed Bieber before, and do not even know who Osho or Fritjof are. I fit the category. So I youtubed them both tonight.

Osho has incredible wisdom. These are my favourite ideas that he shared about love:

“In being selfish you will find all the altruism that you have been seeking.”

“You are told to love the neighbour, but you have never loved yourself. And how can a person that has never loved himself, how can he love the neighbour? First you have to have it.”

“People are loving each other who know nothing of love. It is like beggars begging from each other.”

“To know anything, you have to begin with yourself. I want you to be just simply selfish. You discover so many treasures within yourself.”

“In the ordinary economics, if you give something you will have less. The treasures I am talking about have a different law. If you cling to them, they shrink.

But if you want to grow your treasures and share them; don’t even bother if this is a friend or a foe. Simply give. The more you go on sharing, the more goes on entering in you from unknown sources. A man is just like a well.”

Maybe this is the key to changing our world, our systems, and our relationships, for the better…