Category: Let's talk
I figured that since I put my Olympics post in here instead of Sports Bar, I'd do the same now. So I'm curious. Do any of you watch the Paralympics? If so, what is your main motivation? do you do it to see disabled people compete and make a statement? Do you have any affinity to people who share your disability/ies in general? Do you just love sports or is it an extension of the Olympics for you. If you watch the Olympics and not the Parlympics, what are your reasons. and who's gonna be joining me to watch them this year? Btw, here's the official site.
http://en.paralympic.beijing2008.cn/index.shtml
i'll be watching the paralympics for the same reasons i watched the olympics. i love athletes who make it to the top of their sport. i hope the bbc coverage the paralympics like they did the olympics, i see lots of "to be announced," slots from sept six onwards, and that the bbc, are covering the opening cerimony, so i hope the to be announced slots are given over to the paralympics.
Opa! Do you know if the BBC will have this online? What about the listen Again feature? I mean, can I listen to things that I might have missed from the Olympics
Parallympics are cool, but as to the question why or why not they are not as watchable. Well, fact of the matter is that there is still a lot less exciting competition in many of the events than you see at the "normal" olympics. This is changing rapidly and competition is getting quite spectacular, at least in swimming in the S8 to S10 category and, sometimes, in the B categories. The professional athleticism of disabled athletes is improving hugely, but of course it's not up to the olympic levels, for one thing there is lack of funding and interest enough to make them super stars who could live of their sport only.
There are also always classification issues, how to be fairest to competitors without breaking them down into so many categories that everyone gets a medal sort of thing.
For isntance, if a swimmer in B3 (partially sighted but with the most vission) loses his sight completely, should he be downgraded to Ba (totally blind) or stay in B3. The obvious answer is downgrade him, but he will have advantage over B1 swimmers, swimmers who did not learn to swim sighted, becahse of technique, he learnt better technique as a sighted swimmer than a blind swimmer ever could, so he's got some advantage.
And the matter gets more complicatedin the S categories, there are so many types of disabilities that affect the body in different ways and hence the sport being played, currently these are broken down into 10 different classifications and they have judges that classify you, but sometimes such classification can be contravertialand inaccurate.
So there are issues particular to the parallympics, but since 1992 I've seen huge progress and the athletes are getting more professional every time. By now you can train for 20 hours a week and still not be good enough to make it to the finals for some categories and that is saying a lot.
cheers
-B
I'm now interested in these categories and the training involved. Could you enlighten me?
B, I think, according to my friend who's swimming in the Paras anyway, that there aren't any more B categories. Apparently, totals are now classed as either S8 or S10, I can't remember exactly, but i think it's S8.
The funding, in this country anyway, ahem, Ireland, should I say, is getting an awful Lot better. The friend in question could almost quite happily live off his sport, as he gets a rather large sum of money each year, which has just gone up, now that he's been confirmed for the paras. hopefully it'll start raising in other countries as well. It's not often that Ireland leads the way in anything like this!
As far as training, he trains about 18 hours a week, and has team mates who train a lot more and still struggle to get in!
FM
That is so so cool. go Ireland!
Cool, looks like I will ahve to catch up on the classification. I always had issues with it when I was competing but I quit just before Sydney in 2000.
I will have to go read up on latest developments and how they do the classifying now. I'm happy if they have merged some of these classes because I think it was hard to get enough people to really create an interesting swim.
I will post back some links when I've googled this, might also ask my old coach, believe she's still in charge of the Iceland national team.
I got around $800 a year + swimming and training fees paid when I was training, definitely not enough to live off, especially not in Iceland.
But I know the funding has improved quite a bit, I just decided I wanted to do more with my life than swimming and had had enough even if, technically, I could have gotten at least 5 more years out of it.
cheers
-B
Swimming's definitely an all consuming sport. This poor lad finds it difficult to visit other friends, and keep up his social life, what with getting up early for his morning swim, then going through his gym training, and rounding it off with another swim in the evening. It's definitely a full-time job for these people, but he loves it. I know that he got a lump sum of £12000 not so long ago, but most of that went on coaching and paying for physios to travel with him. i wish he'd hurry up and hire me! But still, it's a lot more than the $800 you were receiving.
I'm also glad that they've squashed some of these classifications. it makes the games much much more interesting to watch. The thing is, the way it was before, it was too easy to get a medal. You make it easy to do that, and, in the eyes of joe public, you devalue the achievements of the athletes, and thus, the athletes themselves. no wonder the paralympics are never taken as seriously as the main stream games. Even now, 10 people get medalled in swimming compared with only the 1 in the olympics. Yes, I understand the need, but Mr Smith down the road won't, because he's never looked into the classification system.
FM