There is now a nice pair of videos, running for just under 12 minutes, on Oscar Pistorius, made shortly before the Beijing Olympics, up on Youtube. They take the story up to the point where the Court for Arbitration in Sport overruled the initial IAFF decision banning him from competing with non-disabled athletes. For that decision, see Gregor Wolbring’s thoughts and related discussion in earlier posts here and here.
Tag Archives: Paralympics
Training Elite Athletes
The University of Alberta, Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine , as part of their Distinguished Speaker Series is sponsoring a talk
Applied Research to support the paralympic wheelchair athlete for Beijing
By Dr. Vicky Tolfrey, Loughborigh University, United Kingdom
Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 5 PM
2- 39 Corbett Hall
Refreshments to Follow
Canadian swimmer breaks own record in Grand style
With both hands raised and signalling “V” for victory, Canada’s Valerie Grand’Maison celebrates her win in the women’s 100-metre freestyle at the Beijing Paralympics on Wednesday Sept 10, 2008. It was her third gold medal of the Games.
The Star.com/Toronto Star
September 11, 2008
BEIJING–Swimmer Valerie Grand’Maison picked up her third gold medal of the Paralympic Games yesterday by breaking her world record in the women’s 100-metre freestyle for the visually impaired.
Lauren Barwick added gold in equestrian and wheelchair athletes Chantal Petitclerc and Dean Bergeron raced to victories on the track as Canada picked up four gold medals on the day.
Grand’Maison finished first in 58.87 seconds, taking more than a half-second off her previous mark of 59.57 set at the 2006 world championship. The 19-year-old from Montreal, who won gold earlier in the 400 freestyle and 100 butterfly, said her preparation has been the key to her success. “I’m eating and resting properly and I’m not letting myself be bothered by any distractions,” Grand’Maison said. “I’ve been pretty nervous for the races but the crowd has been absolutely great.”
`Blade Runner’ Pistorius Wins 100 Meters at Paralympic Games
By Wing-Gar Cheng
Sept. 9 (Bloomberg) — Double-amputee Oscar Pistorius won today’s 100 meters at the Paralympic Games in Beijing, though he missed his objective of beating his own world record time. South Africa’s Pistorius, nicknamed “Blade Runner” because of his carbon-fiber prosthetic legs, finished in 11.17 seconds at the Bird’s Nest stadium, about a quarter of a second slower than his world mark of 10.91 set last year. Continue reading
Canadians sweep podium in Paralympic pool
TheStar.com/Toronto Star
September 7, 2008
BEIJING – Valerie Grand’Maison got Canada off to a flying start at the Paralympics, leading a podium sweep in the 100-metre butterfly for the visually impaired on the opening day of competition.
Cyclist Jean Quevillon captured Canada’s first medal of the Games earlier in the day, a bronze in the men’s individual pursuit for cerebral palsy athletes.
Grand’Maison, from Longueuil, Que., Kirby Cote of Winnipeg and Chelsea Gotell of Antigonish, N.S., finished 1-2-3 in the butterfly. The 19-year-old Grand’Maison clocked a Canadian record one minute 6.49 seconds in her Games debut, less than a second off the 12-year-old world record.
“I’m so happy, I’m speechless right now,” said Grand’Maison, who won five gold medals at the 2006 world championships. “It’s a dream come true. Every single morning I have thought about winning Paralympic gold and it has now finally happened. “And it was extra special to share the podium with my teammates. It’s a proud moment for us.”
NY Times article: Day 1: Olympic Swimmer Du Toit Wins Paralympic Gold
Natalie Du Toit at the WaterCube in Beijing on Sunday. (AP/Greg Baker)
Natalie Du Toit, the South African who won five gold medals at the 2004 Paralympics and who finished 16th in the 20-kilometer open-water swim three weeks ago at the Beijing Olympics, added another Paralympic gold to her collection on Sunday when she won the 100-meter butterfly in her disability class.
NY TIMES article: Amputee Seeks Medal and to Master a Rival
Feeling good never felt more infuriating. Marlon Shirley, the world’s premier amputee sprinter, woke up July 3 with no pain in his knee — not from the half-dozen recent operations, not from the staph infections, not from other problems still lurking in there — for the first time in months. Yet all he could think of was: It’s too late now. I can’t be ready in time.
Marlon Shirley, above in the Netherlands in 2006, has two Paralympic golds in the 100 meters.
photo by Fred Ernst/Associated Press
Ready or not, Monday morning at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing, Shirley will blast from the blocks and run what he calls the race of his life — the 100-meter sprint in the Paralympics, the Olympics for disabled athletes, which opened Saturday. It might become the last race of his life, because for all he knows, his knee will explode somewhere around the 70-meter mark. But two months after assuming he would never race in Beijing, at least he would fail trying.
Read the full story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/sports/othersports/07sprinter.html
China Back on Global Sports Stage
China welcomed world leaders for the opening ceremony of the Paralympics in Beijing on Saturday, eager for another chance to cement its role as a global player to an international audience.
The guest list included President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, President Horst Köhler of Germany and Prime Minister Han Seung-soo of South Korea.
Read the full story here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/sports/othersports/07paralympics.html
Paralympic Athletes Add Equality to Their Goals
- By ALAN SCHWARZ
Published: September 5, 2008
AURORA, Ill. — When he rolls to the starting line for the 1,500-meter wheelchair race at the Paralympics, the Olympics for disabled athletes that begin Saturday in Beijing, Tony Iniguez will wear his Team USA uniform with pride. He will compete for the United States’s Olympic program. He is also suing it for discrimination.
Paralympic athlete Tony Iniguez worked out at the East Aurora High School track in July.
photo by Peter Wynn Thompson for The New York Times
Iniguez is one of many Paralympians who criticize the United States Olympic Committee for providing less direct financial assistance and other benefits at lower levels to Paralympic athletes than to Olympians in comparable sports. The committee awards smaller quarterly training stipends and medal bonuses to Paralympic athletes. Benefits like free health insurance, which help athletes devote more hours to training, are available to a smaller percentage of Paralympians. Continue reading
What Sorts of Paralympics? A Disabled Swimmer’s Dream, a Mother’s Fight
Its about a swimmer with cerebral palsy and developmental differences. An excerpt
“Mr. Kendall Bailey, an athlete who is a citizen of the USA and eligible to represent the USA in international competition, is inappropriately classified to compete in International Paralympic Committee (IPC) swimming competition. Mr. Bailey is intellectually disabled. The intellectual disability classification for swimming (S14) is not presently recognized by the IPC; nor is an intellectually disabled swimmer eligible to compete under the IPC Swimming Functional Classification System.”
see hereTechnorati Tags: Sports, Ableism, Olympics, Paralympics, Discrimination, Disabled people
The Miracle of Bionics – Presenting Challenging Questions
another piece covering Bionic advances and that quotes me a lot that just came out.
more here
Cheers
Gregor
Technorati Tags: Sports, Pistorius, Wolbring, Olympics, Paralympics, enhancement, bionic
What sort of Olympics Paralympics: Beijing Olympics guide on Paralympians
DISABLED people can be unsocial, stubborn, controlling, and defensive according to an official Beijing Olympics guide. The Olympic manual for volunteers in Beijing is peppered with patronising comments, noting for example that physically disabled people are “often” mentally healthy……
more hereTechnorati Tags: Beijing, Olympics, Paralympics, Sports, Perception, Disability, Stigmatization
What sorts of athletes should there be?
This What sorts question many thought they had figured out is increasingly up for grasp again in all kind of areas. Athletes are one of them. Who is an Olympic athlete? Who is a Paralympic athlete? Who is….? As a contribution to this discourse I wrote the article below. It is an open access journal, so feel free to download the paper and of course any comment are welcome here or to me directly.
in SCRIPT-ed – A Journal of Law, Technology & Society
Oscar Pistorius and the Future Nature of Olympic, Paralympic and Other Sports
Gregor Wolbring, pp.139-160
| HTML | DOC | PDF |
Oscar Pistorius is a Paralympic bionic leg runner and record holder in the 100, 200, and 400 meters who wants to compete in the Olympics. This paper provides an analysis of a) his case; b) the impact of his case on the Olympics, the Paralympics and other –lympics and the relationships between the –lympics; c) the impact on other international and national sports; d) the applicability of the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. It situates the evaluation of the Pistorius case within the broader doping discourse and the reality that new and emerging science and technology products increasingly generate internal and external human bodily enhancements that go beyond the species-typical, enabling more and more a culture of increasing demand for, and acceptance of modifications of the human body (structure, function, abilities) beyond its species-typical boundaries and the emergence of new social concepts such as transhumanism and the transhumanisation of ableism.
Living Archives on Eugenics Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.