Why we won't be covering the Paralympics

Short answer: The International Paralympic Committee won't let us.

Sad, but true. As a veteran Olympic writer, I've always been frustrated by our inability to cover the Paralympic Games, a 10-day event following the Olympics that allows athletes with disabilities to showcase their talents in many of the same venues used by Olympians.

Usually, the reason is a practical one: The much-smaller Paralympics take place a week to 10 days after the Olympics -- when 99.9 percent of the world's media already have gone home. (I always thought it would make more sense to have the Paralympics right before the Olympics, when the whole world is watching.) This is especially true of the 2010 Games, when tight budgets at most media outlets have put the clamps on travel.

In fact, not a single national Olympic writer I know stayed on in Vancouver to cover the Paralympics. So needless to say, I was delighted at the possibility to cover at least a piece of the event, thanks to its rare proximity.

Alas, in my all-consuming effort to cover the Olympics in Whistler, I -- and a lot of other people -- inadvertently missed what I now am told was the final, Feb. 28, deadline to apply for Paralympic media credentials. For some reason, this is a completely separate process from credentialing for the Olympics, requiring a completely separate application to a completely separate group of bureaucrats.

There are no exceptions, said Eva Werthmann, the credentials person for the Paralympics. So my request to cover any portion of the Games, which will include several Washington state athletes, as well as a number of members of our armed forces who lost limbs in Iraq or Afghanistan, was summarily denied.

Same fate for the request from my wife, Meri-Jo, a freelance journalist who was hoping to cover the Games for several U.S. publications. And, apparently, for many of our peers who have run into the same brick wall.

Bottom line: A significant group of North American journalists, anxious to capitalize on a rare chance to highlight the stories of Paralympic athletes, is being turned away at the door.

"I am really sorry but hope for your understanding," Werthmann wrote in an e-mail. She invited us to follow the results online, or try again for London, 2012.

It's not my understanding she needs. It's the athletes whose stories won't be told. To them, I offer my humblest apologies for not making all the arrangments well in advance. But in the rapidly changing media world, that's not always easy to do.

Indisputably, it's my fault for failing to meet the deadline for a separate Paralympic credential -- one that makes no sense. Credentialing for the Olympic Games is a months-long process involving security checks and full personal vetting. The Paralympics inexplicably chooses to recreate that wheel. A joint credential would make sense, but none of this is about sense.

The fact is, every major sporting event has a credentials deadline. And just about every one of them makes exceptions when journos are freed up at the last minute and space remains available for them to work in venues, which surely is the case here. It's free publicity for the athletes, and for the event.

Not this one.

The result is that no one on the Seattle Times staff is credentialed for the Paralympics. And the Paralympics makes no exceptions. So any coverage we are able to obtain will come from elsewhere, and probably not focus on local athletes.

I just wanted readers and athletes to know our lack of presence there was not our choice.