FACTBOX: Disabled skiing and other sports
Wed Mar 12, 2008 8:07pm EDT
- Disabled sports grew mainly out of rehabilitation centres in the aftermath of World War Two, with the British spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville holding a sports event in parallel to the 1948 London Olympics that evolved into the modern Paralympic games.
- Most disabled sports such as wheelchair basketball or rowing are usually only accessible to those with at least some working limb movement.
- Wheelchair rugby was designed for quadriplegics who have enough movement in their arms to propel a manual wheelchair but lack hand control -- but is inaccessible to high-level quadriplegics who have no arm movement at all.
- Sports that are available to high-level quadriplegics include sailing using head controls or straws that allow control through sipping and puffing as well as skiing.
- British spinal injury activity charity Backup Trust (www.backuptrust.org.uk) has taken around 1,000 disabled skiers to France, the United States and Sweden in the last two decades.
- Taking six quadriplegic chair users and 10 supporters to Sweden for a week costs 17,000 pounds ($34,300), funded partly by the charity itself and partly through sponsorship and corporate support.
- Sweden's Total Ski School in the northern resort of Are (http://www.totalskidskolan.z.se/) also takes disabled skiers from elsewhere in Europe. Those with movement are able to steer their own carts while those without can be driven by instructors.
- In the United States, the Wounded Warrior Project (www.woundedwarriorproject.org) provides sports activities for servicemen and women wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(Sources: Backup Trust, Wounded Warrior Project, International Paralympic Committee, Total Ski School)
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