Paralympics 2008

knip

knip

knip

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Anyone else watching?
Lets hope our athletes do as well if not better than they did in Athens.

The opening ceremony was rather random but still good.
 
I think that the despicable things the chinese have done/are doing should have no bearing on us cheering on our disabled athletes.
Its not their fault a bunch of people sat in a room picked Beijing to host the olympics/paralympics.
:)
 
I'd rather just enjoy the sport for what it is in all honesty.

I was reading a about a woman on Wiki the other day who was blind and an ex-Paraolympian. I think she collected about 40 gold medals over the years.
 
I always find it hard to get behind the paralympics. Whilst it's good to see these people overcoming their various disabilities and it's no doubt that their achievements are impressive the idea of competition seems inherently flawed. Essentially the 'best' paralympian athletes are those who are the least disabled whilst still meeting some arbitrary criteria as to what constitutes a disability as opposed to able bodied competition where you're simply looking for the best physical specimens.
 
kaiowas said:
I always find it hard to get behind the paralympics. Whilst it's good to see these people overcoming their various disabilities and it's no doubt that their achievements are impressive the idea of competition seems inherently flawed. Essentially the 'best' paralympian athletes are those who are the least disabled whilst still meeting some arbitrary criteria as to what constitutes a disability as opposed to able bodied competition where you're simply looking for the best physical specimens.
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Well said.
 
kaiowas said:
I always find it hard to get behind the paralympics. Whilst it's good to see these people overcoming their various disabilities and it's no doubt that their achievements are impressive the idea of competition seems inherently flawed. Essentially the 'best' paralympian athletes are those who are the least disabled whilst still meeting some arbitrary criteria as to what constitutes a disability as opposed to able bodied competition where you're simply looking for the best physical specimens.
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But that is completely wrong, you need to go and read up on the rules and you will find that very rarely if at all do the competitors actually compete against each other as such.

It is all quite complicated but essentially each athlete is only competing against others in the same category as themselves, not against every other athlete in the same event.
Quite often they are only competing against the clock, and then the time is adjusted according to the classification and then the times can be compared to give out the medals.

Classification is simply a structure for competition. Not unlike wrestling, boxing and weightlifting, where athletes are categorized by weight classes, athletes with disabilities are grouped in classes defined by the degree of function presented by the disability.

Traditionally there are athletes who belong to five different disability groups in the Paralympic Movement:

The first category is that of the amputee athletes. The minimum qualification for this category is that at least one major joint on one limb is missing, for example if an arm is amputated at the elbow, or a leg at the knee. Some athletes, however, may be missing two or three full limbs. Some sports allow amputees to compete as wheelchair athletes.

The second category is that of athletes with cerebral palsy. These competitors have problems with movement, balance, posture and general muscle control. This is caused by damage to different areas of the brain.

A third category relates to vision impairment or blindness. Athletes will have a wide range of impairment, which can be as manageable as requiring contact lenses or glasses, or as severe as full blindness.

Wheelchair athletes are the fourth category. There may be some overlap between this category and others. For example, there may be athletes with cerebral palsy who may require a wheelchair. Some amputees may need - or may be allowed to use - a wheelchair.
The most well-known disabilities requiring wheelchairs are, of course, paraplegia and quadriplegia. Paraplegia means the legs are partially or totally affected but there is use of the arms and hands.
Quadriplegia means paralysis affecting all four limbs. Usually athletes must have at least a 10 per cent loss of lower limb function to qualify for wheelchair status.

The last category is that of Les Autres. In Paralympic terms, this means the other disabilities not covered by the four previous categories. In particular Les Autres applies to disabilities involving disorders such as dwarfism.

Classes are determined by a variety of processes that may include a physical and technical assessment and observation in and out of competition. The classes are defined by each sport and form part of the sports rules.

Classification is an ongoing process. When an athlete starts competing, they are allocated a class that may be reviewed throughout the athlete's career. Sports certify individuals to conduct the process of classification and these officials are known as classifiers.

As I say it is very complicated and you really need to watch hard and listen to the commentators as they explain all the subtleties.

Honestly it is vey entertaining.

Hopefully we should as a country do as well, in Beijing, as the last two Paralympic games. I am betting on Britain being in the top two, again, on the medal table by the end.
 
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We are joint top of the table already.
Have won 4 gold medals today, 3 on the cycling track, and one in the pool. We have also won a silver medal and two bronze medals.
:)
 
markyp23 said:
I'm perplexed by this.

The range of disabilities competing in the same "class" is quite vast. It just doesn't strike me as fair at all. ie) I was watching swimming and everyone had one amputated arm except one guy appeared to have two arms?

Doesn't stop it being interesting viewing, however.
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Appologies in advance for the length of this post, but this is one of those points that takes time to explain thoroughly. :)



As you have seen with the range of amputations displayed by athletes, simply applying these five basic categories (as I explained in my last post) is not enough to ensure fairness in competition.
This is where the different numerical classifications come in, to cater for the differing levels of disability - or to put it another way, to cater for differing levels of functional ability.

In each different sport the classification classes are designated slightly differently, and the tests required to gain classification are different, for instance in swimming, this is the sport I know most about and am a qualified IPC (International Paralympic Committee) official, the following is the classification system used.

The athletes with a visual impairment are classified into three classes, according to the degree of vision loss: S11 for athletes with no sight to class S13 for legally blind.
In the case of swimmers with a physical disability, classification is based on several factors ie, muscle strength, movement co-ordination, joint range of movement and/or limb length. The swimmers are also required to perform a practical water session, performing all strokes and accordingly assessed on their ability.
After the assessment is completed, athletes are classified as follows:
10 classes (S1-S10) in Freestyle, Backstroke and Butterfly
10 classes (SM1-SM10) for Individual Medley
9 classes (SB1-SB9) in Breaststroke.
The higher the number of the class, the lower the disability, eg, class 1 is for athletes with a severe disability and class 10 for athletes with a minimal disability.

This is a very rough outline of the system for swimming, it is much more complicated than this basic class system, but you won't want me going on too long about the intricacies of it all.

Most competitions are arranged so that all the competitors are in the same class so it is a direct competition.
Sometimes however there is what you call a "Multi Disability" competition. This is where competitors of different classifications compete in the same race. In this situation theye are not competing against each other directly but against a a target (time or distance etc) for their particular class.

For example in a 100M MD freestyle event, you may get an athlete in lane 4 classed S6 who can swim frontcrawl easily, touch the finish first in a time that is 10% away from the world record in their class.
However in lane 6 of the same race you may have an athlete who is classed S4 and due to physical limitations can only swim backstroke, they may finish 20 seconds after the athlete in lane 4, however because they have actually got to within 5% of the world record in S4 class they are actually deemed the winner and given the Gold Medal.

In major competitions like the World Champs and the Paralympics, this MD racing does not happen very often, because there are usually enough competitors of each classification, for the organisers to run races for each class individually.


EDIT: There is a good link here explaining a bit more about the differences in the numerical classifications for most of the Paralympic sports.
 
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knip said:
We are joint top of the table already.
Have won 4 gold medals today, 3 on the cycling track, and one in the pool. We have also won a silver medal and two bronze medals.
:)
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I think by the end it will be hard to beat China, purely because of the sheer size of their team. However I would be prepared to put a tenner on GB finishing second or third in the table.
Second would put us in the same place we have been in the last two Paralympic Games.
 
Thanks for the explanations Entai, I had only the vaguest idea about the classifications before and it is good to know more.

Congratulations to Team GB so far, I'm hoping that it continues to be a successful Paralympics.
 
rotters said:
does anyone else have an issue with this guy being in the paraolympics? if he went to court and was allowed to goto the "normal" olympics but didnt get the time, should he be allowed to use this competition as a fall back?




rotters
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I hadn't really thought about it before but I see your point, it does come across a bit "if I can't manage the able-bodied time I'll lower myself to this". Maybe it wasn't meant to and since he is a disabled athlete he should be allowed to compete in the Paralympics but if he'd actually qualified for the Olympics I rather doubt he'd have run here.
 
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