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The Paralympic difference

Understanding what drives Paralympians is easy because it’s the same things that drive Olympians — the pursuit of personal excellence, a competitive spirit, national pride, a willingness to sacrifice, and the desire to be the best.

Understanding what drives Paralympians is easy because it’s the same things that drive Olympians — the pursuit of personal excellence, a competitive spirit, national pride, a willingness to sacrifice, and the desire to be the best.

Understanding the Paralympics, however, is a little more challenging. To view them as an Olympics for people with disabilities is an oversimplification, because no two disabilities are exactly the same and athletes are measured by achieving their personal best rather than the best performance of the day.

It’s a complex system of classifications and percentages, and one that’s not without controversy.

Don’t let the complexity fool you into thinking that it’s easy to win medals at the Paralympics — while many Paralympic athletes may have gotten into sports as part of their rehabilitation process, every athlete that makes it to the Games is as well-trained physically and mentally as an Olympic athlete.

The end goal is to create a level playing field for people with a variety of disabilities so that any athlete at the height of their personal ability has a chance to win.

Through Own The Podium 2010, Canada’s goal is to place first among nations in the Olympics for total medals and in the top-three nations in the Paralympics for gold medals — the measure used by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) when ranking nations.

With three Canadian alpine skiers winning overall IPC World Cup globes this season, one Nordic skier leading his series, and most of the members of the champion national sledge hockey and wheelchair curling teams returning for 2010, a top-three result might seem easy. However, with three competitive categories in every alpine, cross-country and biathlon event — standing, sitting and visually impaired — Canada needs to have athletes that can contend in every single category from March 12-21, 2010.

“We’re confident, but I wouldn’t say (a top-three) is a given,” said Rob Needham, senior manager of high performance for the Canadian Paralympic Committee. “We knew that the top-three would be a challenge, we’ve been sixth in the past two Paralympics in Torino and Salt Lake City, and those were our best ever results. There are a few countries we need to pass or climb over to achieve a top-three and they’re not going to make it easy.”

In Torino 2006, Canadian Paralympians won 13 medals, including five gold medals, to place sixth overall on the medal tally, down two medals from a total of 15 in Salt Lake City in 2002 and 15 in Nagano in 1998. To place in the top-three for gold medals, Canada will need to earn at least 10 gold medals in 2010 or double the 2006 tally.

Canada will face stiff competition from Russia, Germany, Ukraine, France, Italy, U.S.A., Austria, Japan, and other countries that won multiple medals in 2006, and China is expected to emerge as one of the leading Paralympic nations after hosting the Summer Games in 2008.

The Own The Podium 2010 program was created in 2004 to provide additional support to Canada’s national sports organizations heading into the 2010 Games. That support includes increased funding for teams and athletes, access to training facilities and high performance experts, and the Top Secret program, which is looking at technologies and techniques to boost athletes performance.

According to Needham, the program has already been a success.

“Own The Podium has really allowed our winter sports to take development and performance to a whole new level,” he said. “Our winter sports have never had the ability to offer such comprehensive programs, with coaching and training, but also equipment research and design. We have Top Secret, sport science support like biomechanists and nutritionists, all to give our athletes an extra edge to be on the podium.

“We’re quite happy with our progress so far. The job’s not done though, and we’ll be taking advantage of every day between now and 2010 to push performance as far as possible.”

One area in particular that Own The Podium has made a difference has been in the creation of development teams for alpine and Nordic athletes.

“Coaches have been working hard to move athletes up through the system for 2010, with more formalized development teams… to maximize the number of Canadians on the team for 2010,” said Needham. “The two team events in Vancouver, wheelchair curling and sledge hockey, have set team sizes so right now we’re working to train a group for the Paralympics. However, with alpine and Nordic events we’re able to enter a greater number of athletes, which will help build our total from Torino.

“The focus is on expanding our pool of potential medalists in the time before the Games so we’re not as reliant on a handful of athletes, where one injury could set us back.”

There are 192 medals available for Paralympic athletes in 2010, including 64 gold medals.

 

Alpine Skiing

In Alpine Skiing, there are five disciplines for both men and women — downhill, super G, giant slalom, slalom and super combined. With medals for each category — standing, sitting and visually impaired — that means 90 medals, including 30 gold medals, are available.

Canadian racers are well-positioned to find the podium in 2010, recently finishing second among nations in the International Paralympic Committee’s World Cup rankings — Canada’s best ever result.

The team was led by three racers who won overall World Cup globes for the most points — standing skier Lauren Woolstencroft, sit skier Kimberly Joines, and visually impaired skier Chris Williamson. Other skiers to make the podium this year include standing skier Arly Fogarty, and visually impaired skiers Carly Grigg and Kathleen Forestell.

Other athletes coming close and improving their performances include Andrea Dziewior, Josh Dueck, Karolina Wisniewska, Morgan Perrin and Whistler’s Matt Hallatt. Brad Lennea, a sit skier from Whistler, missed the season with a leg injury, but is already back on snow and looking towards next year.

Austria finished first with 9,444 points this season compared to Canada’s 6,914 points, but also had almost double as many racers — Austria fielded 21 World Cup racers this season, compared to 11 for Canada.

 

Cross-Country Skiing

There are seven cross-country events in the Paralympics — men’s and women’s short distance, middle distance, and long distance and the men’s and women’s relay. There are standing, sitting and visually impaired categories for all three distances but not for the team event, which has a representative from each category. A total of 60 medals are up for grabs.

Canada’s star athlete is visually impaired IPC champion Brian McKeever, who races with brother Robin McKeever as his guide. McKeever has raced competitively in able-bodied World Cup events, and has finished in the top-30 — despite being legally blind, and has eight to 10 per cent as much vision as a normal person.

Colette Bourgonje is a another strong racer for Canada’s Para-Nordic Team, winning four gold medals in the IPC World Cup at Mt. Washington in March 2007. Other strong medal prospects currently with the national team include Shauna Maria Whyte, Jean-Thomas Bolly, and Robbi Wheldon.

Several members of the Team 2010 Para-Nordic team have moved to Sea to Sky to train at the Whistler Olympic Park, while Whistler’s own Tyler Mosher is continuing to improve his performance at international events while branching out into free technique (skate skiing) events, and biathlon.

 

Biathlon

There are just four events on the Paralympic Baithlon schedule, men’s and women’s short distance and long distance races, for a total of 36 medals (standing, sitting and visually impaired). The short distance race has athletes making three laps of a 2.5 km loop, stopping twice at the shooting range, and making one lap of a 150-metre penalty loop for every target they miss. Visually impaired skiers use an acoustic system, where the tone changes as the athlete points the rifle towards the bull’s eye.

In the long distance race, competitors ski the 2.5 km loop five times and stop four times at the shooting range. There are no penalty laps, but every competitor is assessed a one minute penalty for every target missed.

Canada’s biathlon athletes are mostly the same as our cross-country athletes, with Brian McKeever in the visually impaired categories, Colette Bougonje and Shauna Maria Whyte in women’s sit ski, and Jean-Thomas Boily in men’s sit ski. Members of the 2010 Team are also training in biathlon.

 

Hockey

At this point there is only a men’s sledge hockey category at the Paralympics, and Canada is the reigning champion after beating Norway to the gold medal in 2006. The sport is played on ice sledges with competitors using adapted sticks that have a hockey stick blade on one end to handle and shoot the puck, and a pick on the other end to move around the ice. Just three medals are available.

 

Wheelchair Curling

Paralympic curling is co-ed, with each team requiring at least one female player, and Canada is again the reigning champion. The rules of the game and scoring are identical to Olympic curling, with players using specially adapted wheelchairs to launch rocks, or special cues that hook on the handles of the rocks. The only real difference between wheelchair curling and traditional curling is that there is no sweeping in wheelchair events.

 

 

 

How athletes are classified

While the team sports of hockey and curling are scored as usual, all competitors must be in a wheelchair or ice sledge, so the exact specification of their injury is irrelevant in deciding medals.

However, for alpine skiing, cross country and biathlon events, athletes can have time subtracted from their actual time based on a percentage decided by the International Paralympic Committee.

Classification and percentages can be a contentious issue, as sometimes athletes feel they have been lumped in with the wrong group or that insufficient percentages are applied to put them on a level playing field.

Classification is an ongoing process, and is constantly being reviewed for each athlete based on their status (if their condition is improving or worsening), technology, and results.

For example, alpine skiing has three classifications in visually impaired (B1 = totally blind; B2 = partially sighted with little remaining sight; and B3 = partially sighted with more remaining sight), seven classifications in standing (LW1 = double above-knee amputee; LW2 = outrigger skiers; LW3 = double below-knee amputees with reduced movement like paralysis; LW4 = skiers with prosthesis; LW5/7 = skiers without poles; LW6/8 = skiers with one pole; LW9 = skiers with a disability of arm and leg by amputation, cerebral palsy, hemiplegic), and three classifications in sitting (LW10 = mono skiers with a high degree of paraplegia; LW11 = mono skiers with a lower degree of paraplegia; LW12/1 = mono skiers with a lower degree of paraplegia such as above the knee amputees).

Each category can include several different types of disabilities. For example, the LW4 class includes single below the knee amputations with prosthesis, paralysis with a maximum of 20 points, a fused knee or a fused hip.

The classification of an athlete, as well as specifics of their disability, are taken into account when applying a formula to their time in each event. One athlete may have 20 per cent taken off their time, while another may have 10 per cent.

Like a handicap in golf, the objective is to provide a level playing field for athletes.



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