ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights ethnographic research on the Paralympic sport of track and field athletics in an attempt to unpack the relationships between the dualisms of health/illness and pain/injury and to get a more nuanced understanding of how the embodied practice of high-performance sport impacts upon on the lives of impaired individuals who are traditionally seen as inactive. Attention that the Paralympic Games receives in the national mainstream media is significant considering there is little, if any, attention paid to Paralympic sport in the two years between the summer and winter versions of the Games. In order to unpack this in the cultural environment surrounding the Paralympic sport, ethnographic data from the sport of track and field athletics that illuminate the tension between intense physical activities. The persistent cost of sport-related injury, both from a curative and preventative perspective, continues to grow. When pain and injury 'capture' an elite sporting performer with impairment, health becomes a distant memory.
