Rugby Dance

If you want to change your mind about para-sports — go watch wheelchair rugby. The participants drive-ride-race in armored wheelchairs, competing in an aggressive, hard-hitting sport that is a mesmerizing combination of rugby and the dynamics of bumper cars at an amusement park — only without the padded bumpers. The sounds of fierce collisions are an inseparable part of the game.

This sport is fast, unforgiving. If you picture para-athletes as people who need empathy — this is a sport without empathy. Rugby is rugby, and cannot be called so if it isn’t aggressive.

Perhaps telling is the moment when the star of the Israeli national team, Moti Zidkiyahu, found himself lying on his back, needing help being lifted back onto his heavy chair — a typical and routine occurrence in wheelchair rugby — and one of the players on the bench (that is, in his wheelchair, on the sideline) shouted at him in a hoarse voice: “Cripple! Cripple!”

He’s allowed to — because this is a sport without empathy. Ostensibly…

The lead photograph of this post is a shot of Moti in a touchdown, a photograph that has been featured in several publications of the Israeli Paralympic Sports Association.

The more I photographed and came to know the game and the players, the more I learned to see the liberation and freedom these athletes find in this sport. Masters of their wheelchairs, they combine strength with forcefulness, and speed with elegance — to the point of creating a mesmerizing dance on wheels.

On the opening day of the league, there was a boy of about 10 or 11 on the sideline, on crutches, with his grandfather. Moti noticed him, approached him, and tried to persuade the boy to join the game — with extraordinary gentleness.