Paris showcases para-athletics
It was great to see Paralympic athletics in Paris in front of big crowds. It is very important to show this significant event. The first thing to recognize is that para athletes are athletes. Former wheelchair marathon winner Jean Driscoll tells of having someone come to her and stay. Driscoll’s answer. “Oh no. You can do it too if you train 4 hours a day, six days a week like I do.”
It’s easy to get confused by the complexity of parathlete classifications and not know your T64 from your T37. Every athletics fan knows that Noah Lyles won the Olympic 100m, but who won the Paralympic 100m? Well, there were a dozen of them. The classification system is complex, but it is important to achieve fair competition so that athletes compete against humans equal level of disability. You can’t have a visually impaired athlete competing against an amputee and a wheelchair user in a race that’s fair for everyone. . Events are divided by classification, with visually impaired, cerebral palsy, amputee and wheelchair separate categories, and indeed divisions within categories, in an attempt to create a level playing field for every athlete. This results in a large number of races with 17 different classifications for men and 15 for women up to 100m.
Parasports are sometimes called adaptive sports, and that’s a good description. Basically, it involves taking basic athletics disciplines and adapting them to allow athletes of different levels and types of disabilities to participate in running, jumping and throwing. Take the run. If you can run, run. If you don’t have two legs, you can run with a prosthesis. If you don’t see it, you can run with the guide. If you can’t walk at all, race in a wheelchair. Races range from 100m to 5000m with no hurdles or hurdles.
A fascinating aspect of wheelchair racing is that it is common for the same athlete to compete in the 100m and the distance. Hannah Cockroft, who often competes in the 100m and 800m, told me she trains six days a week, three on speed and sprinting and three on strength and endurance.
Athletes with disabilities throw the javelin, discus and shot put. There is no hammer, but there is, in two classes, a club throw. Joe Butterfield, a world medalist in the F51 club throw, explained that his disability makes it difficult for him to catch, adding: Athletes who use wheelchairs or have limited stability are usually thrown from a seated position where they are braced. One of the differences in this category is that each athlete takes turns to complete three consecutive throws, rather than the usual practice of one throw per turn, to avoid the time-consuming process of tying and removing the athlete’s armband after each throw.
And remember, para-athletes are just normal people with bodies that aren’t fully functional either from birth, illness or accident.
I’ve written before about German long jumper Markus Rehm, who uses a prosthesis. has a PR of 8.72m. He is banned from participating in world athletics tournaments until cCompetition Rule 144.3(d), which prohibits “the use of any mechanical aid unless the athlete can establish on a balance of probabilities that the use of such aid would not give him an overall competitive advantage over an athlete not using such aid. Rehm, who lost his lower right leg in a wakeboarding accident as a 14-year-old a few years ago, said: “IAAF. says that I have to prove that I have no advantage. It’s not a good decision by the IAAF because you can’t put that pressure on an athlete. it’s none of my business.’ Rehm’s view is that he may have “an advantage in flight, but there are major disadvantages in progress; you don’t have the same balance… and you certainly can’t go as fast.”
https://x.com/i/status/1831410510082011436 couple HJ
