Leveraging Disability Sport Events: Impacts, Promises, and Possibilities

This empirically-grounded text examines the policy, planning, development and implementation of disability sport events. It draws insights from a major international comparative study of different types of large multi-national sporting events: integrated events where able-bodied athletes and athletes with a disability compete alongside one another, and non-integrated events where athletes with a disability are separated by time but occurring in the same location. Guided by a critical disability studies perspective, the book highlights the strategic opportunity of sporting events to influence social change around community participation, and attitudes and awareness about disability more broadly. It also challenges assumptions about positive event legacies and suggests a need for a multi-lateral approach to planning. An important read for students, researchers and scholars in the fields of sport policy, sport development, disability sport, sport management, disability studies and event studies.