The entire paralympic games baffles me. Injuries which cause handicaps are incredibly diverse. The winner will be the one with the injuries that cause the least amount of disruption to their physical capabilities. I applaud the athletes who refuse to let tragic circumstances get in the way of the enjoyment of their sport, but having a level playing field in the Olympics is about who has the most performance out of a set of extraordinary but roughly equal human beings. It seems hard to get that same level of equality in the paralympics.
Does anyone have any insight into how they match competitors to ensure a level playing field? Would someone with a normal heart rate increase ever be matched against someone with a spinal injury preventing normal heart rate increase, which would basically require this kind of pain training?
I raced paracycling for a few years. I was 2nd a nationals once, but never good enough to make it to the paralympics.
There are lots of categories. It's changed slightly now, but when I raced there was C1 - C5 for cyclists, T1 - T3 for tricyclists and H1 - H4 for hand cyclists. So that's 12 categories for each men and women in cycling. I needed to be evaluated twice by physiotherapists for strength, range of motion, etc. Then I was placed in a category. Obviously you want to be put in the lowest possible category for your disability. Lots of shady stuff goes on, faking additional disability etc. You can lodge a protest against other athletes if you think they are in the wrong category.
As I understand it now, they've reduced the number of medals given out, so instead of each category having a medal, each category has a standard speed, and the athlete that beats the standard by the greatest percentage wins. Other sports still have medals for each category but cycling went away from it due to not enough athletes per category. Swimming probably has the most athletes.
Neurological
Fair to normal
- Major and minor neurological signs
- Minimally affected diplegic with spasticity grade 1 or 1+
- Truly ambulant hemiplegic with spasticity grade 1 or 1+
- Monoplegic and minimal athetoids
- Possible loss of function by uncoordinated hands or one leg
Co-ordination
Fair to normal
- Very slight signs of inco-ordination on the bike (not normal function)
Abilities
- Fair to normal (0-2 points): mostly functional but not normal, major and minor
signs
Amputation, Impairment as described in 2b 2 “fair to normal”
- Single amputation AE, with or without prosthesis, no functional grip (54 points)
- Single amputation BE with the use of a prosthesis
Minimal disability: Amputation of all fingers and thumb (through MCP) or
amputation of more than half foot (forefoot). In the case of a single AE-, BE-
amputation or a single upper limb dysmelia, the minimal impairment is met if all
fingers and the thumb of one hand is missing through the MCP joint or other
impairments who are equivalents, without a functional grip. As a proof of the loss
of functional grip, the affected athlete will not be able to operat
Whenever I've played [low level amateur] sport it's not, for me, primarily been about beating the other guy it's been about performing in a way I can be proud of. Sometimes you win but the other guys beats you. Sometimes you lose but beat the other guys.
Better competition generally raises your game and so I've found that my best games have more often than not been against better teams who usually get the higher score.
Perhaps [some] paralympians share a similar view of sporting achievement?
It's not clear to me that the inequality of post-injury physical abilities in the paralympics is substantially different from the the inequality of innate physical abilities in the olympics. In both cases, a good portion of what competitors are measuring is "the playing field", where the playing field is their bodies. The rest is discipline, means to train, and psychology.
In this case, the level playing field between Olympic athletes is that they have all four limbs and normal (or above) coordination and muscle capabilities. In the paralympics, I would consider a level playing field to be one where all the athletes were injured or disabled in a similar fashion. If one athlete is able to automatically raise his/her heart rate while the rest cannot, this is not a level playing field.
Although it is an inspiring story to see athletes at a disadvantage even considering their competition in the paralympics still out there training hard, focusing on their personal goal, and succeeding where their fate has previously told them they cannot.
I think you're missing my point, which is that the performance range of people with "all four limbs and normal (or above) coordination and muscle capabilities" is at least as great as the performance range of people with diverse injuries.
So although it may seem orderly to you in the abstract, it's pointless and arbitrary to organize the paralympics based on type of injury if you're simultaneously allowing a much greater range of abilities to compete in the olympics.
If you really care that much about controlling for physical ability, you need to sort people based on some kind of meaningful sport-specific measure which more reliably segregates people's capabilities regardless of age, gender, injury, etc. But injury type (and for that matter gender and age) are extraordinarily poor proxies which in practice often prevent people from competing against their physical peers.
This is a difficult issue. I've worked with blind skiers in California and Utah. The categories for "VI" visually impaired are simply high partial vision, low partial and total loss (B3 thru B1). So competitors with extremely restricted foveal vision (central point of focus) are there with others with complete field of vision and very low contrast.
The B1's compete with blackout materials in their goggles to ensure that they really are B1's.
There's the usual issues that certain national adaptive sports federations are incredibly well funded, like Spain's, which is/was fed by the national lottery.
> When able-bodied competitors engage in hard physical activities like running or swimming, blood pressure and heart rate increase automatically. Athletes with spinal injuries do not get that response.
Can anyone explain why a spinal cord injury would render a human unable to raise their blood pressure through strenuous physical exercise?
It doesn't seem to make sense.
To summarize what I understand from the Wikipedia article, the neurons involved are located between the T1 and L1 levels of the spinal cord. If you have a spinal injury above L1, some of those neurons are disconnected from the brain, and thus cannot activate normal responses (e.g. fight or flight).
Part of what makes watching people with disabilities compete in events so heartwarming to watch is being able to share in their victory.
But what kind of victory is it?
I used to wrestle competitively, and I still believe that it's the most underrated sport, partly for the following reason:
Wrestling is undeniably a team sport - matches are scored for the entire team, and the support and camaraderie between teammates is not an empty gesture; I can't imagine a successful team that lacks this. But on the other hand, when you and your opponent are on the mat for your six minutes, you're the only one fighting for your team - all the pressure is on you and you alone.
Most importantly, this makes victories personal. You can win your match even if the team loses, and vice versa. You can lose your match and still help the team win (by keeping the margin of victory low, which impacts the score). You can have a personal triumph, and your teammates will share in that, regardless of the outcome of the team's score.
I know less about the Paralympics than the Special Olympics (and yes, I know they're different), but to me, both always stood out to me as wonderful reminders of the true importance of sportsmanship - not athleticism, but sportsmanship. Part of that is about treating your opponent with respect, which is how we usually hear the word, but part of it is about treating yourself with respect. A dishonorable victory may help your team/country, but for you personally, it's a defeat. On the other hand, being able to overcome a personal struggle, even if you don't "win" the match, qualifies as a victory in my book, and as a spectator, I like being able to celebrate that with the athlete.
Knowing that somebody is artificially harming their body in order to boost some artificial metric (like their race time), or even to gain an edge over their opponent - that's not a good way to treat yourself as an athlete. But that robs me of my vicarious joy as well. And that's a horrible way to treat your teammate.
> Wrestling is undeniably a team sport - matches are scored
> for the entire team
Hey Otto, I've got news for you. Wrestling is not a team sport. When you're out there against a guy who is faster and stronger than you, there isn't a whole hell of a lot your team can do for you."[1]
> I know less about the Paralympics than the Special Olympics (and yes, I know they're different), but to me, both always stood out to me as wonderful reminders of the true importance of sportsmanship - not athleticism, but sportsmanship.
No doubt, good sportsmanship is an admirable quality. But is it really reasonable to expect the Paralympics or Special Olympics to be any more of an exemplar of that, than any other athletic competition? At the end of the day, the participants are still people... with ego, vanity, jealousy and whole gamut of human emotions.
It is easy to accept such a position. But then you find many cases where it IS acceptable for an athlete to cause harm to themselves. You would know, you were a wrestler. You knew the guys who just cut a bit. And then there were those monsters who cut nearly whole weight classes. And it wasn't just that they were undisciplined and screwed up and had to make up for it. Those are the lean mean killing machines, who somehow squeeze out a gallon of water from their bodies.
And while temporary, it is most certainly dangerous. And they most definitely gain an advantage.
Which comes back to, it's all relative. Acceptable behavior is not fixed. What is sportsmanlike is fluid, and changes between sports, and over time, and even geographically, and carries a great due of subtlety.
For example, in basketball, intentional fouling is often a sound decision. North American Ultimate Frisbee is the most unsportsmenlike thing in the world according to the rest of the world. Major league baseball pitchers routinely (as in always) break the rules on how long they wait between pitches (and the batters are just happy to oblige). The whole thing is a complicated furball.
I din't feel bad for them, I moreover lost respect for them. Damaging your body more to prove that disability can't stand in your way to success is pathetic and hypocritical. Sadly this just makes me less interested in watching the Paralympics.
(Shrug) I gained respect for them. Many if not most of those who compete in a so-called "normal" athletic event either damaged their body to get there, or will damage it intentionally during the competition. (Have you ever watched an American football game, for Pete's sake? Do you have any idea what those guys are doing to themselves? Smashing a toe is the least of their concerns.)
What I read was an article about people hacking their bodies to get to levels of performance they wouldn't otherwise be capable of. In this case the athletes' bodies are already damaged, typically in ways that would stop the rest of us in our tracks.
My opinion is contrarian and I don't expect to see much agreement here or elsewhere. But then, I've also argued that there should be an "unlimited" category in sports like cycling where the athlete with the best drug lab wins.
>Have you ever watched an American football game, for Pete's sake? Do you have any idea what those guys are doing to themselves?
You mean the game where you get to wear one million paddings that makes even skinniest person look buffed up? I would have gone with Rugby as a better example of being brutal. However, you argument still doesn't hold because in these cases you are not self inflicting a damage on yourself. Sure you are more likely to get hurt during the game and have a higher chance of causing a permanent damage but there is a big difference between doing that to yourself just to win a game and being a part of an accident. Whatever happened to the term Sportsmanship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sportsmanship ?
>What I read was an article about people hacking their bodies to get to levels of performance they wouldn't otherwise be capable of.
That argument would have a better merit if they were to compete against the "normal" athletes. However they are not, they are competing against people who has similar disabilities and limitations like them. So its will be a fair game if they don't resort to such performance enhancing methods.
Why not? For example: sprinters injure themselves during training on a regular basis. Strength increases much faster when you train a bit past the point of injury and then heal, repeatedly.
Quadriplegic is partial loss of function of all limbs. Usually total loss in the legs, partial loss in the core and arms. A break between C1-C4 will probably have total loss of arm function where C5-C7 may just be fingers.
Does anyone have any insight into how they match competitors to ensure a level playing field? Would someone with a normal heart rate increase ever be matched against someone with a spinal injury preventing normal heart rate increase, which would basically require this kind of pain training?