Paper short abstract:

The 2007 Parapanamerican Games in Rio de Janeiro helped to make the adapted sports a concrete reality for a large public in Brazil. Here, I'll discuss the expectation about the legacy from the 2016 Paralympic Games, not only for athletes but for people with disabilities in general.

Paper long abstract:

Almost all people when talking about the next sportive mega events in Brazil are referring to the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. Undoubtedly, these are the two most important of them, but there is another that, in each edition, is acquiring more visibility and importance: the Paralympic Games.

In this paper, I'll focus on this event, trying to show how the 2007 Parapanamerican Games in Rio de Janeiro was a decisive moment in turning the adapted sports into a concrete reality for a large public in Brazil. After that, I'll compare it with the possibility that the 2016 Paralympic Games can consolidate these advances, which is a desire present in declarations from athletes and directive members involved in this event.

To interpret these discourses, I'll use Bourdieu's contribution about the capacity of nomination and Simon's theory about the power dispute between "hetero-identity" and "auto-identity" to analyze how these events can impact other spheres with in Brazilian society. So, I'll put specific attention on following the change in the social identity of this group and its capacity to amplify its definition, passing from "lame" to "people with disabilities". One example of it can be observed in the media coverage of the last events which showed a slow, but constant, substitution of categories from "poor thing" - associated with pity - to "warriors" - associated with overcoming.

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