The “Misfitting” Potential of Disability: Navigating Ableism in Swimming

For people with disability to flourish in sport, providers require more complex understandings of how ableist norms are entangled in sporting cultures. This article examines how neoliberal–ableist logics structure everyday sport contexts, focusing on swimming as one of the most popular sports for people with disability in Australia. We report on the quantitative and qualitative data produced through an online survey of disabled swimmers, analyzing four major themes: disability knowledge deficits, overvaluing Paralympic classification, discrimination in club cultures, and participants’ pleasure and pride in swimming. We rethink inclusion beyond ableist imperatives to “fit into” problematic sport cultures by exploring the epistemic shift toward a more relational, disability-led understanding that happens when disabled bodyminds “misfit.”