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The Parallel Games

Where they came from, where they’re going next - Pique Newsmagazine's Andrew Mitchell reflects on 10 days in Torino.
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It was a moment of Paralympic clarity. I was standing at the bottom of the super G course at Sestriere, Borgata in a media scrum around Vancouver’s Lauren Woolstencroft. She had just earned a silver medal in the standing category, shaking off a disappointing fourth place downhill finish from two days before.

I was content to sit back and take notes while the more seasoned reporters asked their questions, knowing I’d get a chance to ask a few questions of my own when they were done their interviews.

I’m not the world’s greatest sports reporter, but I’ve learned a few things in the last six and a half years talking to people whom I believe are some of the top athletes in the world – ask a stock question and you’ll get a stock answer.

Yes, Lauren was happy with her win. No, she didn’t let the fourth place finish get her down.

Then the tone of the questions changed. The reporters started to ask questions about her disability, like how exactly she learned to ski, did she consider herself a role model, and how did she find the accessibility in and around Sestriere. Not one question was asked about her run that day.

And it was a great run. On the big screen at the finish area I saw her make a slight mistake up top and kick up a bit too much snow around one corner. She pulled it back together almost instantly, and by the bottom of the course was carving perfect ‘Cs’ around every gate, gaining speed wherever she could find it, to earn the silver medal.

It wasn’t the gold medal that she wanted but if she didn’t have the discipline to get back on track after her lapse up top it wouldn’t have been any kind of medal at all. To me her quick reaction screamed one thing – training and more training.

So I broke into the interview and asked a few questions about her run, and then about her training regimen.

When there was snow on the mountains, she said, she was on it, and when the snow was gone she was in the gym doing dryland training, knowing full well that all the other competitors from different countries were doing the same thing, and that she has to be completely dedicated to stay one step ahead of the competition. It was a full time job she said.

At that point, one of the reporters asked an unfortunate follow-up question that he regretted right away.

"What kind of exercises can you do in the gym?"

Woolstencroft was born missing both legs below the knee, and her left arm below the elbow, but with the help of prosthetics she competes in the standing category. Woolstencroft won four World Cup globes this year, slalom, giant slalom and super G, as well as the overall title while competing against athletes with a huge range of disabilities.

Despite what might look like an uphill battle with her own disability, Woolstencroft has never known anything different in life than adapting and overcoming, and can now get around as well as anybody else. She also skis a lot better than most able-bodied people – two days earlier she was clocked at well over 100 km/h in the downhill, but she has gone much, much faster than that.

With his question the reporter was in a sense asking her if it were even possible to work out with her level of disability, like he was skeptical of her ability. Or at least that’s how I, and Lauren, saw it.

Woolstencroft looked the reporter in the eye, and replied: "I do the same things in the gym any able bodied racer would do. And you could ask the same question of Thomas Grandi, but would you ever ask him that?"

"Probably not," replied the chastised reporter, who to his credit reported the incident word for word in his article that day.

Woolstencroft’s message was clear – she doesn’t want to be seen as some kind of tragic figure, heroically struggling against a cruel disability. She doesn’t want our pity. What she wants is to be seen as a legitimate athlete, as someone who has devoted years and years of her life to be the best in a sport that is more challenging and competitive than most people understand. In that way she’s no different than any other able-bodied high performance athlete in the world.

As I said earlier, it was a moment of clarity for me.

Growing up in Toronto, kids with disabilities and special needs were always sent to different or "special" schools. Aside from one student in high school who had mild muscular dystrophy, all 1,200 students there would qualify as able-bodied.

There were disabled people everywhere you went in the city, but you didn’t know them or ever have the opportunity to see the world through their eyes. Most of the time anyway.

I was there when Terry Fox ran down Yonge Street in downtown Toronto, the sidewalks lined by literally hundreds of thousands of cheering supporters. I gave every cent of my allowance that summer to the Marathon of Hope, and still think of it as the best money I’ve ever spent.

Several years later I was one of a handful of representatives at my school chosen to go to a rehabilitative centre in my community called Lyndhurst Lodge to meet Rick Hansen, the Man In Motion, who had just completed his two year trip around the world by wheelchair.

With that kind of exposure to people with disabilities, maybe I can be excused for thinking of disabled athletes as inspirational (in a different way than other athletes are inspirational), when I was sent to cover the 2006 Paralympic Games in Torino.

Now, thanks to spirited athletes like Woolstencroft, I think I finally understand. Paralympians are athletes, pure and simple, and while some have had to go through a personal hell to get to that elite level, most of them would rather inspire people through their abilities than their disabilities.

It’s as if the able-bodied look at disabled people and see something missing, while people with disabilities look at themselves and see the potential that is there. What they do with that potential is truly what’s inspirational.

Two days after that moment of clarity I found myself talking to Woolstencroft at the finish circle once again. She had just won a gold medal in the giant slalom, and the media scrum was about three times as large with reporters from Germany, Japan, the U.S., and half a dozen other countries jostling for an interview.

Some of the Italian skiers were doing well that day as well, and thousands of spectators in the almost packed grandstands made it impossible to follow every word Woolstencroft said, but she had a few private words with me once the scrum had broken up and the other reporters rushed off to file their stories.

After asking her several questions about her race and outlook on the final slalom event, I asked whether she had a problem with the way some members of the media were covering the Paralympics, by looking for inspirational stories rather than stories about sports.

"It’s not like the concept of the Paralympics is new anymore," I said.

Woolstencroft shrugged and sighed.

"I think any media attention is good for us if you look at things in the long run," she said. "Some reporters are always looking for the inspirational story and will focus on that, and then some of the people I talk to are really focused on the race and the fact that we’re athletes and we’re here to compete," she said.

"But you can’t ignore it, (a disability) is why we’re here, why there is a Paralympics in the first place, so I really don’t have a problem with questions about it. As long as that’s not all they want to focus on, because then I think it takes away from the sport."

Lesson learned.

The Paralympic movement keeps moving

It took a war to spark the Paralympic movement.

In 1948, a German neurosurgeon by the name of Ludwig Guttman, who fled to Britain at the start of the Second World War, held a small competition for war veterans under his care who had various spinal cord injuries.

It was held on the tarmac of a hospital’s helicopter landing pad, and coincided with the Olympic Games in London, which the vets were glued to on the radio.

The competitions were called the Stoke Mandeville Games for the Paralyzed, after the name of the hospital, and they consisted mainly of wheelchair races. The first event was such a success that the Games were held annually, and it wasn’t long before the word got out.

Four years after their creation, during another Olympic summer, a team from the Netherlands crossed the Channel to England to compete in the Games, making it an international affair.

After that, a decision was made to hold an international Games every four years to coincide with the Olympics, with more countries participating in 1956.

In 1960, the first Paralympic-style Games were held in Rome, just weeks after the Summer Olympics were held there, with several different types of disabilities represented. There were also more than 400 athletes from 23 different countries.

Realizing they had created something significant, the organizers dubbed the event the Parallel Games. Para means "with" in Latin, which also indicated that the Games were to take place with the Olympics.

The Winter Paralympics came a little later, debuting in 1976 at Innsbruck, Austria.

The alpine and cross-country events came first, but as adaptive sports improved, the Paralympic Winter Games grew to include biathlon, sledge hockey, and, starting in 2006, wheelchair curling.

This coming June, the International Paralympic Committee will also decide whether to add snowboarding to the 2010 Games as either a medal sport or a demonstration sport.

One thing that will hinge on is Sport Canada recognizing adaptive snowboarding as a legitimate activity, which in turn will allow the Canadian Snowboard Federation and other organizers to start holding events and building a Paralympic team.

Whistler’s own Tyler Mosher, an adaptive snowboarder who is also looking to compete in 2010 in the standing cross-country skiing events, is helping to lead the effort to bring snowboarding to the Paralympics. He says the idea is gaining traction in all the right places, but it will still be a challenge.

"The big problem now is that there is no organization that keeps track of adaptive snowboarders – they probably ride by you all the time on the hill but we have no way of knowing who they are," said Mosher.

"The CSF wants to host an event next year during a World Cup, and we would need to organize a world championship and test events before 2009, so we really need to know who’s out there."

Locally, the Whistler Adaptive Sports Program is also organizing an adaptive snowboard event for April 22, which Mosher says will help to identify potential Paralympians from the region.

The U.S. Amateur Snowboard Association has also started to include adaptive snowboarding categories in their annual championships, which attract disabled riders from across North America and Europe.

It’s a start, but Mosher believes that athletes will be coming out of the woodwork to compete if the IPC agrees to at least make snowboarding a demonstration sport in the 2010 Paralympic Games.

As it stands the Winter Paralympics are currently about an eighth as big as the Summer Paralympics, with just 500 athletes compared to over 4,000 athletes from 120 countries in Athens in 2004, but the winter side is continuing to grow. This year’s Paralympic Games featured almost 100 more athletes than at Salt Lake in 2002, and nine new countries.

2010: A Paralympic first

In 2010, Whistler could host the first Paralympics where all five disciplines are concentrated in the same basic geographic area.

Typically the Paralympics make use of official Olympic venues, which can be scattered all over the map.

For 2006 Winter Games the ice sledge hockey was in Torino, the wheelchair curling at Pinerolo, the cross-country and biathlon at Pragelato and the alpine skiing at Sestriere Borgata. The shortest distance, between Pragelato and Sestriere was about 25 minutes with a few stops on the way. The longest distance, between Sestriere Borgata and Torino, was about two and a half hours.

I said "could host the first Paralympics…" because Hockey Canada, blown away by the level of fan support for the Paralympic Ice Sledge Hockey events in Torino two weeks ago, has suggested that the 2010 medal games could take place in Vancouver instead of Whistler, using the larger Olympic venues. While that move would definitely give the athletes more exposure, something the athletes want and deserve, it also creates several issues for the Paralympics as a whole.

One obvious issue is that a decision to move the sledge hockey events from Whistler will force the community to revise plans to build an arena in the village. Will a new large capacity arena even be necessary if Whistler won’t be hosting the medal games?

Another issue is that it will separate the Paralympic athletes into two towns once again. Judging from their comments at the 2006 Games they’d much rather stick together.

"It would be nice to be able to go to a hockey game or curling or even check out some of the cross-country events, but that’s impossible for us," said Kimberley Joines, a Canadian sit-skier who won bronze in the women’s super G. "To go to Torino to watch a sledge hockey game would take a minimum of seven hours there and back, and the alpine athletes have events and training every single day at Sestriere Borgata.

"We watch the games together on television at the athletes village and cheer our team on, but it would be nice to be there," said Joines.

"I think that’s the great thing about having the Games in Whistler, we’ll all be in the same village, and the athletes will actually be able to go check out some of the other events."

Assuming the entire Paralympic Games remain in Whistler, according to the original plan, Joines believes Paralympic sports will get more exposure than Torino because the media will be concentrated there as well.

The Canadian Paralympic Committee is of the same opinion.

The lessons of 2006

The Torino Games and International Paralympic Committee were a success by any measure, with packed grandstands for almost every event as well as the successful launch of Paralympic Sports TV, an online television station that broadcasted over 100 hours of Games coverage around the world.

Tiziana Nasi, the head of the Torino Organizing Committee, or TOROC, credited some of the interest in the Games to the European factor – Italy is surrounded by participating countries after all, and most family, friends and fans of athletes could get to the Paralympic venues by driving, train or short, inexpensive flights.

Another part of the success was a program with event sponsors, regional governments and others to bring school groups from Italy and France to the Paralympics. The students learned about the sports and athletes in classrooms, and many had the chance to meet with Paralympic athletes before the Games.

According to Miriam Wilkens, the director of communication for the International Paralympic Committee, students accounted for about 50,000 of the more than 200,000 tickets sold to events during the Paralympic Games, which ran from March 11 to 19.

But while the 2006 Paralympic Winter Games were a success in terms of numbers, there were other problem areas that the Vancouver Organizing Committee hopes to avoid.

Chief among problems was the issue of accessibility, especially where the cross-country and alpine venues were concerned. Unexpectedly warm weather caused an early snowmelt, which quickly turned the gravel paths to the venues into muddy streams. Athletes and disabled spectators in wheelchairs were actually getting stuck.

To remedy the situation, TOROC found rubber mats and laid them out to create a bumpy but navigable route to the cross-country venues, and too late, to the alpine venues. Arrangements were also made for more vehicles to drive right to the staging area, even though it meant driving across a cat track that led to a chairlift.

According to Dena Coward, the director of Paralympic Games at VANOC, steps are already being taken to prevent similar accessibility issues in 2010.

"We’re even now working on the development of barrier-free, or accessibility guidelines with our stakeholders," she said. "We’re working on barrier-free athlete accommodation, on accessible venues for public safety, as well as transportation so the Games are truly accessible.

"Our best learning so far (in accessibility) was to be at the Nordic venue and see the matting and pathways they created because of the weather. We believe our weather could be similar at that time of year, so we will have to plan for mud."

Coward adds that VANOC has retained a consultant, Vancouver’s Brad McCannell, who will examine venue plans at every stage of development to ensure they’re accessible. McCannell and VANOC will also look at how TOROC switched over facilities from Olympic needs to Paralympics needs in just 12 days, which is similar to the amount of time VANOC will have in 2010.

"I think the speed at which (TOROC) was able to flip the athlete villages from Olympic to Paralympics with adaptation to make them accessible to wheelchair users was instructive," said Coward.

Other lessons learned were how to address problems around ticketing to events, as well as to ensure the 2010 Paralympics have enough sponsorship.

The 2010 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games are more closely linked than any previous Games.

For starters, 2010 will mark the first time that Olympics and Paralympics will be held under the same banner. The official title is the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

In addition, all six top tier Olympic sponsors have signed on with the precondition that they would sponsor the Paralympics as well – something that did not happen in Torino or past Games. There were a lot of similar sponsors for Olympics and Paralympics in Salt Lake City and Sydney, but in both cases the decision to sponsor both events was optional.

Tim Gayda, VANOC’s managing director for sport, said technical delegates from VANOC learned a lot attending events in Torino that can easily be applied to Whistler’s Paralympic Games.

"It’s nice to start from scratch with a lot of the venues," he said. "All the design team members in the sport were in Salt Lake (where they first) saw the use of plastic mats, and now we have a chance to solve that problem.

"The new venue consultant will ensure accessibility when a venue is brand new, but it’s more challenging when you’re using an existing venue, so that’s where we’re going to have to apply some serious thought over the next little while."

One challenge that quickly became apparent was the use of the Timing Flats on Whistler Mountain as the base area for Alpine events. The only paved road accessing the area is residential and just two lanes wide, and the hike from the base at Creekside is considerably longer and steeper than the journey to the Sestriere base area. And, unlike Sestriere, there’s no chairlift into the Timing Flats that can be used by spectators, athletes, coaches and other officials.

According to Brian MacPherson, CEO of the Canadian Paralympic Committee, his main concern is ensuring that athletes can get to the venue, but he believes a way will be found to accommodate spectators – especially disabled spectators.

"It’s not uncommon for there to be a long walk to alpine venues, wherever you go, but (VANOC) has four years to figure out a way to get people to the events," he said. "These are details that can all be worked out, providing we get to work on them early enough.

"For example, there is a paved road to the timing flats which is already more than they had at Sestriere. If a path is steep you can always put in switchbacks. The answer’s there, and it will likely be a combination of things."

Speaking on behalf of the athletes, MacPherson says accessibility in Torino was a bigger issue than they were prepared for.

"Accessibility, from my point of view, was less than desired – which genuinely surprised us because there’s stuff you have to know, and have to plan for and implement long before the athletes start to arrive," he said.

"Anything on the main track, from airport to athletes village, from athletes village to venue – everything between those points should be 100 per cent accessible for every disability that’s part of the Games, and that’s not what we saw there.

"Once you’re off the track, like the touristy stuff in town, going grocery shopping, you have to manage your expectations as a person with a disability. Every country and city is different, and not all are equally accessible, but any venue connected with the Games needs to meet a certain standard."

Some people in Torino got the message loud and clear, and a public campaign got underway during the Paralympics to "Drop The Gap!" or make the city more accessible to people with disabilities. I talked briefly with a volunteer distributing flyers for the campaign, and she pointed out how the curbs were all raised at the city intersections, making it impossible for people in wheelchairs to move around older sections of the city without assistance.

MacPherson did give high marks to TOROC for the opening and closing ceremonies. This was only the second time that organizers have put on completely new shows for both, as typically Paraylympic ceremonies have been identical to Olympic Ceremonies.

"The Paralympics are their own event, it’s not the Olympics," he said. "They’re different Games, there’s a different target group, and a different group of athletes, and they should have different opening and closing ceremonies. I think that TOROC set the bar high there, the ceremonies were not just different, they were every bit as spectacular as the ceremonies for the Olympics. Some said they were better."

While the venues and athlete villages were pretty much as promised, to MacPherson they underlined the importance of hosting a compact Paralympic Games entirely in Whistler in 2010.

"There are usually two villages, that’s the norm because of the large distances between ice sports and snow sports, but the Paralympics are much smaller than the Olympics and being spread out like that… dilutes the whole atmosphere. We really saw that in Torino with the athlete villages in Sestriere and the city," he said. "It kind of dampens the whole spirit of the thing, so having one village in Whistler will be great.

"Our stand on that has never wavered. In the bid stage for the 2010 Games we first and foremost wanted to present to the world a compact Paralympic Games, which would be unprecedented."

MacPherson said he was disappointed to learn that Hockey Canada had suggested moving some of the sledge hockey games to Vancouver, and said his position was the same as when Whistler briefly considered moving the Paralympic sledge hockey arena to Squamish.

"The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, sports and athletes. I can tell you that a compact Games with all sporting events in a 20 minute shuttle ride from each other will be unprecedented and welcomed by athletes around the world," he said. "Having it compact will benefit everybody – athletes, coaches, officials, spectators, and media alike.

"It will also benefit the Games. This will create exposure for the sports and the athletes like nothing else we’ve seen."

The heroes of 2010

In the last two Paralympic Games Canada has ranked sixth among nations. In 2002, the Salt Lake City team won 15 medals, while in 2006 the team earned 13 – but with almost 50 fewer medals available to win because of a change in classifications, the 13 medals actually represents an improvement.

Canada achieved those 13 medals with a team of just 33 athletes, including a 14-member gold medal ice sledge hockey team and a four-member gold medal wheelchair curling team. The alpine team had 11 members and the Nordic team (cross-country and biathlon) had four.

The Canadian Paralympic Committee has set a goal of finishing in the top three of nations in 2010, a feat that in 2006 required 18 medals for Germany.

To get there, national sports organizations, supported by the CPC, are actively recruiting and training our next generation of Paralympians.

There’s a lot of room for improvement, according to MacPherson.

"We’re recruiting all the time, whether it’s for 2010 or beyond," he said. "Could we do a better job at recruiting? Well the statistics are that there are 900,000 disabled Canadians between the ages of five and 44.

"Of that 900,000, about 700,000 are of such a disability that they are capable of participating in a sport and becoming an athlete.

"Of that 700,000, only 21,000 are registered to participate in a local organized sport. That’s only three per cent. On the able-bodied side about 33 per cent of Canadians are registered with a local sport club… so yes, we need to step up our recruiting efforts."

National sports organizations that represent disabled sports have already stepped up their own programs to develop athletes for 2010 at the national, provincial and local level. In addition, efforts are being made to ensure that Canada will be able to field one or more athletes in every category.

The CPC also launched a national "Feel The Rush" campaign in early March to encourage more participation in sport at the local level, which in turn will help to identify athletes with Paralympic potential.

According to MacPherson, the biggest obstacles at this point are provincial governments.

"By and large they do not champion Paralympic sports within the provinces or give them an equitable share of funding," he said.

"Right now we’re working to educate provincial government officials that they need to take a leadership role in integrating able-bodied and Paralympic sports within each province, and give them an equitable share of available sport funding."

The CPC is also attempting to establish a Canadian Paralympic Games similar to the Canada Games, "in the hope that every province would send a team," said MacPherson. "That would open (the provinces’) eyes, and would be a great way to strengthen development from the bottom up.

"There’s so much untapped talent out there, and we have to find a way to tap into it."

A different perspective

Having been to the Paralympics, I now look at Whistler a little differently. For the first time ever I noticed that the Village Gateway stairs off the taxi loop, an area that was just renovated, has no obvious wheelchair ramp. There’s a ramp down in Village Square but no ramp up.

Many local shops and restaurants are raised off the Village Stroll, and it’s not always immediately obvious where the ramps and elevators can be found.

Some efforts are mixed. For example most of our municipal buses are designed to be wheelchair accessible, but not all of them. Most of our taxis are not specifically designed to accommodate wheelchairs.

Whistler-Blackcomb and the Whistler Adaptive Sport Program have made it easier for disabled athletes to access chairlifts and the gondola, but still acknowledge that they have a long way to go to become completely accessible. Whenever a facility is renovated or retrofitted on the mountains, WASP is now invited to give their input.

No doubt there will be some dramatic changes leading up to the Olympics and Paralympics, at least in the areas that MacPherson calls on the ‘main track’ between the sports venues and athletes village, but what about everywhere else?

Having a compact Games in Whistler will be a boon for the Paralympic Movement, providing everyone can get around.

How will we be judged in 2010?



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