Blind Sports: The very talented blind athletes and the team sports they play
Being disabled is not an easy thing to live with in the world. Being a disabled athlete is harder still, but with large scale tournaments and events such as the Paralympics, the support and acceptance levels of disabled athletes is on the rise. One type of disabled athletes, the blind, have a tough time playing sports but they have managed to adapt the rules of certain games and have come up with innovative solutions to be able to excel at various sports. With the 2012 Paralympic Games to be held in London, the world is all set to witness some of the greatest blind athletes in action.
There are many sports that blind people actively take part in, such as football, cricket, volleyball and a game of their own invention called Goalball. What is so interesting about these variations on the sports is the fact that although they have been adapted slightly for blind players, the spirit and rules of the game have been largely retained. Blind cricket is a very interesting sport because a lot of the rules and style of play have been retained as the original game but some have been adapted and others changed to make the game playable by the blind or partially sighted. One of the biggest changes to the game is the size of the ball; a size three football is used. In a similar fashion to many other blind sports, ball bearings are put into the middle of the ball and this causes the ball to make a rattling sound as it travels across the pitch allowing the blind players to hear it. They can take their cue from the rattling and hit the ball or field it with ease. The other rule changes to the game are that for a completely blind person, the ball must bounce twice but cannot be rolling and the bowler must ask the batsman if he or she is ready before pitching the ball and they have to yell ‘play’ just as they release it. The ball must only bounce once for a partially sighted player. A totally blind fielder can catch the ball after it has bounced once and the batsman is declared out. Finally, a blind batsman is given one chance before being given LBW and cannot be stumped out. Over the years, this game has become very popular and has gained numerous supporters all over the world.
Blind football is another very interesting game because it is truly eye-opening to watch blind players dribbling the ball without bumping into each other. The ball again has ball bearings in it and there are several other rule changes to the game. The style of play is very different to regular football, because the game sees a lot of short passes and nifty footwork. There is also absolute silence in the stadium because the players need to hear the ball and each other when they play. This has to be the biggest difference between the loud audiences of regular football and the silent ones of the blind version of the game. The players who play the sport want fans to forget that they are blind and simply concentrate on watching a good game of football. And this is beginning to happen; spectators are treated to a great game of football and people tend to forget they are watching blind football because the game-play is so interesting and lively.
A game completely unique to the blind is called Goalball. This interesting game is also extremely simple but very fun to watch. A court similar to a tennis court minus the net and with different lines is laid out and there are three players on each team. The objective is very simple: one team of blind players has to roll a ball to the other team’s half and try to cross the goal line behind the opposing three players. The objective of the team defending is to try and stop the ball by waving their arms and feet around. Many different strategies are used in the game such as passing to a teammate who then rolls the ball cross court to try and deceive the opposing team. The game of Goalball was invented in 1946 by Austrian Hanz Lorenzen and Sepp Reindle, and the initial objective of the sport was to rehabilitate war veterans blinded in combat during World War II. It became so popular that it was introduced into the Paralympics in 1978 and from there gained worldwide popularity.
Blind sports have come a long way from being something done as a rehabilitation exercise to being played all over the world. Disabled athletes want to be treated as the normal athletes that they are, and they want people to look past the blindness aspect and enjoy the sport being played. This has been happening recently with the increased level and skill of play in disabled sports. The future looks very bright for this very noble and worthwhile discipline in sports.
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