The biggest gap in sports isn't talent, it's who we're paying attention to

What a conversation about Paralympic women athletes reveals about visibility, opportunity, and who gets a real shot.

If you’ve been watching March Madness, you’ve probably noticed how quickly a player can go from unknown to everywhere. One big game or viral moment. One story people latch onto and suddenly, everyone cares. Everyone is their biggest fan. It’s a reminder of something simple: visibility changes everything and not just in who we root for, but who gets opportunities, funding, and a future in sport.

Recently, I listened to a conversation about women in Paralympic sport that made that idea impossible to ignore. Here are five takeaways that stuck with me and why they matter far beyond the Paralympics.

1. You can’t support what you’ve never seen

We like to think we support the “best” athletes, but the truth is, most of us support the athletes we’re shown. As Emily Oberst, a U.S. Paralympic silver medalist who moderated the conversation pointed out, even as Olympic coverage becomes more balanced, visibility for Paralympians still has a long way to go. To be clear, that’s not because people don’t care, but rather because most people haven’t been given a reason to. Most people don’t know about the Paralympics, let alone feel connected to the athletes. It’s hard to when you’ve never seen or heard about it...

The more athletes show up in our feeds, on our TVs, in our conversations, the more they become part of who we follow. Visibility can’t be the reward but rather the starting point.

2. Visibility doesn’t just change perception, it changes access

One line from Nathaly Guzmán Figueroa really stuck with me: “When athletes are not seen, they are less likely to be funded.”

Guzmán Figueroa is a Programme Specialist on Disability & Gender at the United Nations Population Fund so when she talks about visibility, she’s talking about real-world consequences, not theory. No visibility means fewer resources and fewer resources means fewer opportunities…and the cycle repeats. On the other end of the spectrum, the opposite is also true. When athletes are seen, doors open, investment follows, and pathways expand. This isn’t just about awareness, but also access.

3. For many athletes, just getting to the start line is already a fight

When you hear from Alana Nichols, you realize pretty quickly that the story doesn’t start on race day. It starts years earlier. “I’ve had to constantly adapt,” she said. Adapt doesn’t just mean switching sports, though Nichols has done that at the highest level as a three sport Paralympian with six Paralympic medals. It means figuring things out without a clear path. It means navigating systems that weren’t built with you in mind. It means asking for things that should already exist. She share what that actually looks like:

“It’s not just about training and competing. It’s about finding access, figuring out resources, and sometimes creating opportunities where they don’t exist yet.”

Her career spans Summer and Winter Games so, on paper, it looks extraordinary, and it is…but what that list doesn’t show is how much of the journey required her to create her own way forward. That’s the part most people don’t see. We see the podium. The highlight. The finish line. We don’t see the behind-the-scenes problem-solving, moments where the support isn’t there.

Athletes like Nichols don’t just show us what excellence looks like. They show us how much more it can take to get there. And when those stories aren’t told regularly, it’s easy to assume the path was smoother than it actually was.

4. Community isn’t a bonus, it’s often the reason athletes stay

One of the most human moments in the conversation wasn’t about medals or results. It was about people.

Staci Mannella spoke about how much community shapes an athlete’s journey, not just at the elite level, but from the very beginning. At one point, she emphasized how critical that support system is:

“Community is everything—it’s what keeps you in sport when things get hard.” Because for many Paralympic athletes, community isn’t something you find after success. It’s what makes continuing possible in the first place. It’s the teammates who just get it. The spaces where you don’t have to explain yourself. The people who remind you that you belong, even when systems around you make that harder to feel. That kind of support doesn’t show up in box scores and staying, more often than not, is a team effort.

5. Visibility isn’t just about being seen, but also being understood

While moderating, Oberst commented something that’s easy to overlook. “The visibility, the storytelling, the sustained attention: it’s not where it needs to be.” That distinction matters because there’s a difference between being visible and being understood. A highlight clip might introduce an athlete. A headline might name them, but that’s not the same as actually knowing their story and that’s what Oberst was getting at. It’s not just about more coverage, it’s about better, deeper storytelling. The kind that captures what athletes have navigated, what they’ve built, and what it’s taken to get there. When that depth is missing, athletes can feel like one-off stories instead of part of the broader sports landscape.

But when it’s done right, something shifts. They don’t just show up, they stick with you. That’s when visibility starts to turn into real connection.

So what now?

You don’t need to suddenly become a Paralympics expert, but we can all start paying attention.

Who shows up in your feed. Whose stories get told. Who you’re being invited to care about, and who you’re not. Because the more we expand that lens, the more people get a real shot at being seen and that changes everything.

Want to watch the full conversation?

Tune in to watch the full conversation here.

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AI acknowledgement: Jamie Mittelman used AI in the copyediting of this piece