About
Adaptive sports are not merely sports for people with disabilities — they represent a powerful movement in which physical limitations do not become barriers but instead transform into challenges overcome with dignity, courage, and inspiring resilience. This includes wheelchair paragliding, blind football, swimming without limbs, wheelchair basketball, cross-country skiing with guides, powerlifting with prosthetics, and much more.
The photographer’s task is not simply to capture the action, but to reveal the spirit: to catch the determined gaze before the start; to notice the trembling hands gripping the handlebars of a racing wheelchair; to convey the silence after crossing the finish line — when emotions speak louder than the roar of the crowd. Achieving this requires not only technical skill, but also empathy, respect, and the ability to sense beyond the frame what cannot be seen by the eye.
Accepted:
- Photographs of athletes taken during training sessions or competitions in any adaptive sport — from local tournaments to Paralympic Games
- Images where athletes are the central subjects: their concentration, the joy of victory, the bitterness of defeat, team support, interactions with coaches and spectators
- Documentary and staged shots that convey emotion, motion, tension, and overcoming — everything that makes adaptive sports a true art of struggle and inspiration
Not accepted:
- Photos where athletes are not the central figures: equipment without people, empty stands, close-ups of sports gear lacking context of action
- Images where it is impossible to identify the depicted activity as adaptive sports — lacking visual indicators (prosthetics, wheelchairs, guides, specialized equipment, gestures characteristic of blind or deaf athletes, etc.)
- Photographs that insult or demean participants in adaptive sports
