Mega-events attract ever larger media audiences, and the 2016 Rio Paralympics were no exception. As audiences grow, media coverage extends to ever more varied domains, which are themselves then colonised by an increasing range of discourses. One of main discourses to develop since the early 2000s has been that of the so-called supercrip, one which challenges the notion of “impairment” often connected with disability by foregrounding the para-athletes’ triumph over adversity, celebrating instead their courage, grit, and perseverance leading to athletic success and personal and increasingly national prestige. In this article, we analyse the continuing importance of the supercrip discourse in coverage of the Rio Paralympics but also move on to highlight its tactical alignment with other—both competing and complementary—discourses of nationalism, sexualisation, militarisation, and celebritisation. We analyse textual and visual manifestations of these discourses using both critical discourse analysis and Foucauldian discourse analysis. We conclude by paying particular attention to the increasing visibility of discourses which, while acknowledging the potentially positive role of the supercrip discourse in focussing on athletic success, repurpose that discourse by foregrounding instead the day-to-day experiences of belittling misrepresentation and neglect, including political neglect.
SUMMARYWe investigated sprint performance and running economy of a unique 'mini-muscle' phenotype that evolved in response to selection for high voluntary wheel running in laboratory mice (Mus domesticus). Mice from four replicate selected (S) lines run nearly three times as far per day as four control lines. The mini-muscle phenotype, resulting from an initially rare autosomal recessive allele, has been favoured by the selection protocol, becoming fixed in one of the two S lines in which it occurred. In homozygotes, hindlimb muscle mass is halved, mass-specific muscle oxidative capacity is doubled, and the medial gastrocnemius exhibits about half the mass-specific isotonic power, less than half the mass-specific cyclic work and power, but doubled fatigue resistance. We hypothesized that mini-muscle mice would have a lower whole-animal energy cost of transport (COT), resulting from lower costs of cycling their lighter limbs, and reduced sprint speed, from reduced maximal force production. We measured sprint speed on a racetrack and slopes (incremental COT, or iCOT) and intercepts of the metabolic rate versus speed relationship during voluntary wheel running in 10 mini-muscle and 20 normal S-line females. Mini-muscle mice ran faster and farther on wheels, but for less time per day. Mini-muscle mice had significantly lower sprint speeds, indicating a functional trade-off. However, contrary to predictions, mini-muscle mice had higher COT, mainly because of higher zero-speed intercepts and postural costs (intercept-resting metabolic rate). Thus, mice with altered limb morphology after intense selection for running long distances do not necessarily run more economically.
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