O capacitismo no ambiente esportivo de rendimento: um estudo com atletas de atletismo adaptado

Abstract

There is a historical stigmatization associated with people with disabilities and the impact of societal configuration on the exercise of citizenship for this social group. In recent decades, adapted sports for people with disabilities (PWD) have been a driving factor for solutions, equity, and the fight for rights that enable improvements in the anti-ableism cause. In this sense, the aim of the study was to understand how athletes from Alagoas with disabilities express, or not, the phenomenon of ableism in the sports context. Through ethnographic- inspired research, with a qualitative approach to the findings, we followed 12 athletes and two members of the coaching staff of an adapted athletics team in their training routine over six months. We observed the structural organization of the sports team, the training systems, the daily lives of the athletes, and their interaction with their practice partners as well as with the space. We identified that the adapted sports scenario reproduces linguistic ableism in its daily dynamics. Due to years of camaraderie and friendship, the communication of PWD can also be influenced to unintentionally reproduce prejudice, whether ableism or homophobia, as exemplified in the study. The dual situation of prejudice faced by women is also highlighted, stemming from discrimination against both the female gender and disability. Furthermore, factors such as financial conditions, barriers to professional sports development, the influence of social media, and the functional classification of athletes serve as symbolic ableist operators in the high-performance sports context.