Paralympics in Pictures

I have been watching loads of coverage of the Paralympics the past few days - it has been so exciting to watch these athletes in action.  I love seeing people with limb difference not letting it limit their life and seeing them excel in an event that involves so much physical talent.

I have also been learning all of the rules and special nuances that go into the Paralympics.  I kept hearing and seeing the athletes being listed in classifications - T44, T11, W1 - and having no clue what this meant.  The numbers and letters classify the athlete into a particular category based on his or her ability to perform a certain ability and based on what their particular impairment is.  They classify the blind players into one class, the wheelchair bound athletes into their own classes based on what part of their body is affected.  They see if a person with a unilateral leg amputation can compete on the same level as a person with a bilateral leg amputation.  It is very interesting to see how it all gets done, there is an official committee that, after assessing and evaluating each athlete, place them into their classifications.  So, in a run, you could see a T42 classification competing against a T43 because they have been assessed as having the ability to compete on the same level against each other, despite a person having two prostheses versus only one.

I watched blind men play soccer today, people with one arm throwing the javelin, amazing women racing in wheelchairs, the triple jump, sitting volleyball, cycling.  It is all very fascinating and I highly recommend sitting down and logging onto the computer to watch whatever you can.  Oscar Pistorius ran a world record breaking heat in his 200m race and then failed to defend his title in the final and ended up getting the silver medal by .07 seconds.  There is already scandal being talked about there, an emotional Oscar saying that the winner, Alan, had blades that were too long and too tall and that were impossible to compete against.  The IPC board of the Paralympic committee supported the winner and refuted Oscar's claims.  

All in all, thus far, it has been very exciting to watch.  The link that I have been using to watch the games is:

http://smart.paralympic.org/player/Main.html 

It gives live coverage as well as the schedule of events that are being shown every day.  I think the commentators have been fantastic and I think they are doing an incredible job of covering all of the events.  I am not sure how to get involved in the Paralympics in 2016, but I am putting it down on my list of goals.  I would love to not only attend the games, but in some way volunteer or be a part of the games as well.  Seeing these athletes winning medals for their country makes sitting in that room for countless hours a day, modifying that hunk of plaster, more than worth it.