Cool Bits of News About 2008 Beijing Paralympics and Olympians With Disabilities

The Paralympic Games in Beijing will start on September 6th. Learn about the twenty Summer Paralympic Sports at this website! Did you know that this year Rowing is a new event at the Paralympic Games? Do you know how to play goalball? Brush up there. Do you know about the different classifications for different events? Lots of great info on that site. Did you know the Summer Paralympic mascot is a cow? Neither did I. Apparently,

Cows, symbolic of a down-to-earth, diligent, staunch and never-say-die spirit, are adopted to show the unremitting spirit of athletes with a disability in being the best they can be. It dovetails with the upbeat spirit of Paralympians and the concept of "Transcendence, Equality, Integration" of the Beijing Paralympic Games.

The determined, optimistic and diligent spirit of cows reflects a positive attitude to life. The Paralympic Games calls for people with a disability to enjoy the same rights to compete in sports as anyone else, and to achieve sporting excellence and inspire and excite the World, and thus develop their strength to add vigor and vitality to social progress.

Yes, those cows and their never-say-die spirits...Hmm. The Olympic mascots are: a fish girl, a panda boy, a fire boy, an antelope boy, and a swallow girl.

Watch the Paralympics

This site, Paralympic Sport TV, will show news and events from the Paralympic Games, which start on September 6th, 2008. It is run by the International Paralympic Committee. Watch a cool trailer here. I don't know how much coverage they will feature.

If you live in the UK, details of Paralympics coverage on TV can be found here. They will air over six hours of Paralympic sport per day for twelve days.

In Australia, the ABC will broadcast over one hundred hours of Paralympic coverage. That's the most Paralympic coverage of any country. The schedule is here.

As far as I can tell, there will be little to no coverage of the Paralympic Games in the United States. A nice person from the US Paralympic Team website informed me that hopefully there would be news about some Paralympic coverage. I will keep you posted! I'm guessing there should at least be some televised specials. If anyone knows of any scheduled coverage, leave me a comment!

And finally! This year marks (I believe) the first time that an athlete will compete in the both Paralympics and the Olympics. South African swimmer Natalie du Toit, who I wrote about before, will compete in the Olympic 10 km open water swim ( a new event) as well as six different Paralympic swim events.

Unfortunately, Oscar Pistorius did not qualify for the SA Olympic team in either the individual or relay competitions. He will represent South Africa in the Paralympics and he plans to continue training in hopes of qualifying for the 2012 London Olympics.

In addition, Polish table tennis champ Natalia Partyka will compete in both the Olympic and Paralympic table tennis events. She is missing her right forearm and she competes left handed.

Images: Top: A cute little brightly-colored cartoon cow is the 2008 Paralympic mascot. A caption states her name in English and Chinese as Fu Niu Lele.

Bottom: Natalia Partyka, a young white woman missing her right forearm, strikes an athletic pose as she prepares to return the ball in a table tennis match.

More Paralympians in the News: swimmer Kendall Bailey

A great story appeared in the NY Times this week about a swimmer with multiple disabilities and his journey to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Paralympics.

Kendall Bailey qualified for the Paralympics in the 100 meter breaststroke. As an athlete with cerebral palsy, he qualified within a classification of athletes with similar disabilities. He also has Klinefelter's Syndrome, autism, and mental retardation. Overall I thought the tone of the story was great. It's not just the story of him swimming, it's also the story of how the US Paralympic Committee tried to disqualify him because of his multiple other disabilities, not once but twice!

In a nutshell, the Paralympics has many categories of ability levels and different disabilities. I believe that an athlete must qualify within their own classification or a more-able classification. The Paralympics used to have a classification for athletes with intellectual disabilities, but after the 2000 Spanish basketball team was discovered to consist mostly of non-disabled athletes, that classification was eliminated.

Back to Bailey's story. Initially, another country protested and had Bailey reclassified as "only intellectually disabled" and therefore ineligible for the Paralympics. He is a talented athlete but he isn't yet able to advocate for himself on this level. His mother appealed that decision and had him reclassified as a physically disabled athlete. All was well, and Bailey qualified for the Summer Games.

Several weeks later, Bailey's mother found out that the US Paralympics committee had made a formal protest to the International Paralympic Committee, stating that Bailey had an intellectual disability, and "the intellectual disability classification for swimming (S14) is not presently recognized by the IPC; nor is an intellectually disabled swimmer eligible to compete under the IPC Swimming Functional Classification System." The complaint stated he had been incorrectly classified and he should be disqualified from the Paralympics. The claim was ridiculous, but Bailey's mother had to spend $25,000 in legal fees to get it resolved! Said his mother about the issues he has faced,

Just because he has other issues, he’s been looked at in a whole different way that hasn’t been fair,” she said. “He’s been singled out and isolated because of his autism, because of his intellectual disability. If Kendall wasn’t autistic, would any of this have happened? Absolutely not.

The story really highlights the need for self-advocacy and advocacy of parents and friends. Without someone to fight for his rights, Bailey wouldn't be going to Beijing this summer. The article also took a balanced look at how Kendall struggled growing up and playing every sport he tried until he learned to swim and found his niche. Best of luck on Team USA, Kendall!

Image: A young man in a swimming pool leans against the side and squints into the sun. He wears a swim cap and goggles, and is surrounded by sports drinks and swim training equipment.

Beijing Offends Everyone With Guide for Olympics Staff

I just noticed this story about China's extremely backwards attitudes towards people with disabilities. A guide went out to one hundred thousand Olympic Volunteers for this year's Summer Games. In the section titled, "Skills for helping the disabled," China's Olympic Committee brings us such gems as:

Some physically disabled are isolated, unsocial, and introspective. They can be stubborn and controlling; they may be sensitive and struggle with trust issues. Sometimes they are overly protective of themselves, especially if called “crippled” or “paralysed...

When you make eye contact, do not fuss or show unusual curiosity. Never stare at their disfigurement. A patronising or condescending attitude will be easily sensed, even for a brain-damaged patient.

Often the optically disabled are introverted. They seldom show strong emotions.

This is really offensive. I want to hope that this is just a bad translation, but I don't think that's it. The Times UK article points out that, even though there are eighty million people in China who have disabilities, discrimination against them is firmly embedded in modern Chinese culture. "The Communist Party’s desire for a healthy nation, characterised by the one-child policy, fostered deep prejudices that extended to forced sterilisations, bans on marriages between disabled people and abortions of abnormal foetuses."

After complaints from loads of disability rights groups, the manual is being revised to be less horrible. Let's hope the Paralympic Athletes get the warm welcome they deserve in Beijing, instead of being greeted by these type of archaic and offensive attitudes.

In brighter news, Paralympian Cheri Blauwet was recently featured in a Visa commercial on NBC prime time. I will try to hunt it down on YouTube to post it up here. Visa will also feature other Paralympians in their commercials as we approach the summer games.

Also, this guy who has cerebral palsy is walking 830 miles across Michigan to raise money for United Cerebral Palsy. On stilts. I wonder if the three-foot stilts make it easier to cover ground on his trek. I'm guessing not. And his pants bill must be through the roof!

Image: Shaho Qadir finishes the Great North Run half-marathon in style. A man in athletic attire and a bike helmet walks on his hands on a road. He is missing both legs just below the knee. Behind him in the distance, a man is finishing in a racing wheelchair.

Odds and Ends, NY Times Redeems Itself

I missed lots of interesting stories over the weekend because I was in Las Vegas. My good friend JB was playing in a baseball tournament so we went to cheer him on and be tourists as well. I had a great time and at the baseball game I met one of the stars from one of my favorite tv shows, Grey's Anatomy. She was hilarious and awesome and she was nice enough to let me take a photo with her. Most actors are much less attractive in-person than on-screen, but she was even more beautiful in person!

First off, the NY Times has fairly dazzled me with an article about a US soldier with a severe brain injury. Many more soldiers in this war are surviving serious injuries because of better helmet and armor technology. This means there are more vets with disabilities than ever. The soldier profiled was in a Hum-vee that drove over an anti-tank mine. The brain "rattling" he received caused severe disability. He has very little independent movement and he cannot speak. He has what I have sometimes heard called "locked-in syndrome," someone of typical intelligence who cannot speak and communicates only with great difficulty.

I would highly recommend you read this entire article. The article talks about the soldier Shurvon, his injury, his progress in rehab, how he fits into his family, how his mother acts as his caregiver, and his options for communicating. Shurvon communicates only using his eyes. The author of the pieces writes a lot about how expressive Shurvon is with his eyes.

The article is also pretty amazing because the author exposes his own prejudices towards people with severe disabilities, and in doing so makes the reader confront their own beliefs. To me, it is brave to come out and admit that your preconceived notions were wrong and that you have changed them. Well done, Daniel Bergner! This seems like the type of story that can change the way people see people with disabilities:

I thought that there seemed little reason that Shurvon couldn’t someday earn a master’s degree. But at other moments the reasons appeared too immense ever to be overcome; the notion of college, let alone graduate school, seemed merely a soothing fantasy. And sometimes impossible to overcome, too, was the idea that Shurvon’s life might not be worth living; that I, in his place, would rather stop breathing, cease thinking, that I would prefer to die.

Whenever this idea took hold, I recalled a medical ethicist at R.I.C. telling me about studies showing that doctors and nurses tend to rate the quality of life of severely impaired patients to be far lower than the patients do themselves. The ethicist had spoken, then, about the ways that a life acquires meaning.

Next up, this month's "Paddler" magazine has an article about a kayaker who is a paraplegic. A kayaker buddy sent it to me. I'll give you a quote from the story. His raft guide is telling him that he will be able to handle an inflatable kayak on the river, despite his poor balance:

“Trust me,” he winked.

I asked him if he’d ever taught a paraplegic to whitewater kayak and he said he’d never had the opportunity. This was all I needed to hear.

I didn’t demo an inflatable kayak to ensure that I, a paraplegic, could safely paddle. I just bought one.

Weighing in on the Oscar Pistorius Olympics debate is bioethicist Art Caplan, and Paralympian/marathoner (and fellow Stanford alum!) Cheri Blauwet. They have different backgrounds and they both make very interesting points that you won't have heard already in the news. Cheri writes,

I feel that we are being extremely short-sighted to simply say "well...he doesn't have anyone to compete against." With the right resources and investment into grassroots development, we could have hundreds of talented athletes ready by the Paralympics in London 2012.

Medical tech blog medGadget reports on a new device to help people with severe visual impairment see better. The "Sightmate" helps users use the vision that they do have. It also makes you look awesome like Geordi La Forge.

Image: Levar Burton, playing the Star Trek character Geordi La Forge. A youngish handsome black man in a black and yellow uniform shirt with narrow wrap-around futuristic glasses.

Other Olympians with disabilities

I wrote in a previous post that Natalie du Toit, the South African swimmer, and Oscar Pistorius (if he qualifies), the South African sprinter, would be the first Olympians who have amputations to compete in the summer Olympics. I have to take it back, though, because I read about George Eyser, an American gymnast with a wooden leg who won 3 gold medals (plus 2 silver and 1 bronze!) at the 1904 olympics. His gold medals were in rope climbing, vault, and parallel bars. I would love to say more about him but I can't find any more information about his life. Could make an interesting research project!

Other notable Olympians with physical disabilities include:

Neroli Fairhall, a female New Zealander paraplegic who competed in archery in the 1984 Olympics. She was injured in a motorbike accident and subsequently competed from her wheelchair. A fantastic photo of her can be seen at the top of this post.

Paola Fantato, an Italian archer, followed in Fairhall's footsteps by competing from a wheelchair in the 1996 Olympics. Fantato had polio as an infant which left her with a permanent physical disability.

American runner Marla Runyan, who is legally blind (fun fact: I met Marla Runyan several years ago because we went to the same hairdresser. She is 100% muscle!) ran in 2000 and 2004.

Karoly Takacs was a Hungarian sharpshooter who lost his right hand in a grenade accident in 1938. He then switched to shooting with his left hand and won two gold medals in the "25 meter rapid fire pistol" event, 1948 and 1952. (I would include a picture, because he looks really intimidating, but I don't like guns so you can go look at his wikipedia page instead.)

Jim Abbot, the American Major League pitcher, was born missing his right hand. He won a gold medal at the 1988 Olympics on the US baseball team before starting his ten year professional pitching career.

Oliver Halassy, a Hungarian water polo player, won two Olympic golds and one silver medal (1932, 1936, 1928). He lost his left leg below the knee in a streetcar accident as a child.

Pyambuu Tuul is a blind marathon runner from Mongolia. After a corneal transplant restored partial sight in one eye, he ran in the 1992 Olympics.

Ildiko Ujlaki-Rejto, a Hungarian fencer who was born deaf. She won two gold medals in the "individual foil" event, in 1964 and 1968.

I wonder if anyone at the time these athletes competed was crying foul for the use of a wooden leg on the parallel bars or a wheelchair on the archery range.

Paralympians in the News: Josh George, Natalie du Toit, and Oscar Pistorius

The NY Times has a new story up about a young American athlete going to his second Paralympic Games next year, Josh George. I enjoyed it. He talked about his frustration about not being taken seriously as an athlete due to his disability.

“You tell them, ‘I’m a wheelchair racer,’ and they’ll say, ‘Good for you!’ like, ‘Good for you, you’re getting out of the house and doing something,’ ” said George, who graduated with honors from the University of Illinois last year and still trains primarily in Champaign. “It’s not, ‘How’d you do at the last race?’ You don’t get taken as a serious athlete a lot of the time. People don’t quite understand exactly what goes into it.”

Then the article really does take a look at everything that goes into Josh's training. Starting with his childhood injury, then how he was drawn into sports, and finally his elite-level training. Plus there are some videos of his racing, for the techie/jock in you that wants all the nitpicky details of his racing chair and technique. A+ profile, NY Times!



AND from msnbc, the 'Court for Arbitration in Sport' decided that South African double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius was eligible to qualify for the Beijing Olympics. Previously, another sport organization had ruled that Pistorius was NOT eligible to compete for a spot on the Olympic team because his prosthetics gave him too much advantage over other runners. Earlier tests indicated that the way his prosthetics worked made them superior to regular feet. New tests done by MIT biomechanics researcher Hugh Herr (a fellow double-amputee athlete!) found that the special Cheetah blade prosthetics were NOT superior to regular feet.

The issue of Pistorius' eligibility to compete as an Olympian rather than a Paralympian is a very sticky one. Both sides of the debate are compelling. And Pistorius himself is in a bit of Catch-22: if his prosthetics give him an advantage, he isn't eligible to race in the Olympics; if his prosthetics leave him at a disadvantage, he won't be competitive with other Olympic sprinters. At least now he will get his chance. I wanted to include this great quote from Pistorius himself from the article.

“When I found out, I cried. It is a battle that has been going on for far too long. It’s a great day for sport. I think this day is going to go down in history for the equality of disabled people.”

I would be remiss if I didn't include Natalie du Toit, the first amputee to compete in a summer Olympics! (ETA: I read that she was the first but then I did some more research, and there have been a handful of amputee athletes who have competed in the Olympics! New post to come on that topic. She will be the first amputee swimmer!) du Toit, another South African, just qualified for 10 km open water race (this event is new, which would explain why I've never heard of it). She will be competing in that event and then competing in numerous swim events in the Paralympics two weeks later.
Her story is very impressive. A competitive swimmer, she failed to qualify for the 2000 Olympics. In 2001, she lost her leg in a traffic accident. She continued to train but did not qualify for the 2004 Olympics. In the Spring of 2008, she finally qualified! du Toit does not use any prosthetic to race. And, she's only 24. I look forward to seeing what she can do in Beijing this summer!

Images: Top: Josh George finishing the 2004 Chicago Marathon. Dressed in blue with a blue helmet, he is bent over his racing wheelchair steering it over the finish line. Middle: A man in a track uniform and sunglasses has both feet off the ground as he sprints. His feet are black carbon-fiber J-shaped blades. Bottom: A very muscular woman in a black racing swim suit is poised on a starting block, ready to dive into the pool. She is standing on her right foot as she has a left above-knee amputation.