China take on the USA in the women's sitting volleyball
Source: paralympic.org

By Anchalee Kongrut, a Thai journalist from the Bangkok Post who is on exchange with the Economic Observer

It is unrealistic to expect TV stations to broadcast the London 2012 Paralympics with the same frequency and intensity as they did the Olympic Games. Yet, I expected more of CCTV 5, China's main sports channel.

When I tuned in to the station over the past weekend, all I got was car racing and game shows.

It is not that the CCTV 5 hasn't been paying attention to the London 2012 Paralympics. The station provided a live broadcast of the opening ceremony, they've also given air time to a few matches in which Chinese Paralympians were taking part and provided daily wraps of the day's events.

Yet, the station could have done better by airing more live-broadcasts of events.

The Paralympics is more than a sporting event. It is a truly unique competition that occurs only once every four year.

In a programming schedule that's already saturated with soccer matches, tennis competitions, NBA games, golf and more, the Paralympics allows the public a rare chance to watch something new and inspiring.

Last night when I turned to CCTV 5 for an update about what had been going on at the Paralympics that day, all I could find was an unrelated volleyball match between Australia and Ireland.

As I love watching volleyball, I decided to sit down and enjoy the game, but in the back of my mind, I couldn't stop wondering how those sitting volleyball players in London were doing.

Am I asking too much?

China won the most golds of all the countries that took part in the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing.

The country has also spent huge sums of money on sports for disabled athletes and the China Disability Sports Training Center in Beijing is the world's largest training venue for athletes with disabilities.

But it's not just in China that it's hard to catch the Paralympics on TV.

People have also lambasted America's NBC for not dedicating enough airtime to the Paralympics.

My recent experience watching highlight reels from the Olympics and also desperately searching to find Paralympic events on TV have made me ponder what it means to watch sport.

I think that apart from entertaining us, sport and athletes have the ability to inspire us.

For that reason alone, Paralympians deserve more attention and airtime.

For me, these Paralympians show us how to defy gravity and how to make your mark on the world despite the odds.

Television viewers around the world should have been given a greater opportunity to watch these Paralympains in action.