Mujer, deporte y discapacidad. Relatos de vida de jugadoras de la selección Colombia de tenis de mesa adaptado.

Abstract

This article presents life stories of two players from the Colombian adapted table tennis team. Through their own narratives, we reflect on the experience of being a woman and a high-performance athlete with a motor disability in a context of socioeconomic limitations. In this way, it is concluded that the narratives of the protagonists question the hegemonic discourse of the media, which suggests that the economic and social limitations experienced by athletes with disabilities are not relevant as long as they do not have “mental limitations”. This discourse hides the profound inequalities experienced by people with disabilities in general and paralympic athletes in particular. Therefore, paralympic athletes demand greater financial support and better working conditions; also, they demand to reduce the gap in social recognition between male athletes without disabi-lities and female athletes with disabilities. Furthermore, they invite journalists – and society in general – to abandon the attitude of pity that they often have towards people with disabilities and, consequently, to stop thinking of disability as a kind of tragedy. The data were collected through indepth interviews. The article is divided into four parts: 1) an introduction to social studies on disability is presented; 2) a historical overview of adapted sport and studies about sport and disability is outlined; 3) the life stories of the protagonists of the article are detailed; 4) some conclusions are outlined.