Rio 2016 Paralympic Games

[FlyingMeeces]

Thanks for the warm-up.

This year we get paratriathlon for the first time at the Paralympics, with five classifications: one for wheelchair users, three for decreasing levels of physical impairment in walking people, and one for visually impaired and blind triathletes competing with a guide. Team GB have qualified 11 triathletes across the 5 classifications, so should be in with a shout for a decent few medals there.

I hope they've fixed the beach pontoon thingy by then, though.

Athletics - Hannah Peacock, Stephen Miller, Johnnie Peacock, Richard Whitehead, Sophie Hahn who set a world record at the tender ago of 16 in the 100m.

Looking forward to the table tennis purely because of that one amazing shot from last time.

Great memories of cheering myself hoarse at Brands Hatch for the road cycling, hoping we'll get to see anything half as good this time. Zanardi was imperious, I'm glad he's still riding although his chances must be sliding sideways a bit as he's now 49. And Sarah Storey catching the men's race and passing them.

I'm excited about the boccia, but they've decided basically not to bother televising it so I'll be hoping some helpful soul takes it upon themself to live-tweet it or something.

Is anyone actually going?

[FlyingMeeces]

Russia's total Paralympics ban upheld.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/disability-sport/371654...

Hmm - IPC more courageous or just less corrupt than the IOC?

[FlyingMeeces]

The road cycling at Brands Hatch was right up there amongst some of the very best experiences I have ever had. By some miracle I got tickets inside Brands Hatch itself - most of the courses were out on surrounding roads but the finish straight was the actual BH finish straight - for almost the entire thing, I think I maybe missed the first day or the first half day or something. David Stone and Dame Sarah Storey and the two GB women handcyclists who crossed the line hand in hand hoping to share the bronze medal. Zanardi, and Zanardi, and even more Zanardi, I screamed myself hoarse calling them home with the thousands of others there, it was properly magical.

It's a fkin' tragedy if Brazilians miss out on this - especially with how cheap the cheapest tickets are, and the fact that the road events presumably mostly won't be ticketed at all, some of those people will never get another chance to see world class sport (para or otherwise) up close and personal.

I went to some of the Commonwealth Games stuff too, by then a dad and an aspiring Paralympian in my own right (I'm at least a decade off still now…), it was pretty awesome but not AS awesome as Brands Hatch was.

[FlyingMeeces]

The Mad Monk said:

Some person who held office at The London 2012 Paralympics has just been on the Beeb suggesting that some sort of crowd funding is organised to buy tickets for Rio schoolchildren so that the children can see the Games and the athletes don't perform in front of 90% empty stadiums.

Goodness me! If that is the problem why don't they just walk round the schools giving out sheaves of tickets?

Or just open the gates? Why does everybody except me have to make everything so complicated?

I have no idea why someone can't just pop round the few hundred nearest schools with a few hundred tickets for each. Preferably an athlete of some description, do a bit of a talk kinda fing, but whatever.

Might need to lay on buses or something to make sure that the poorest kids from the furthest out areas can get there, but that must be about all really.

[FlyingMeeces]

Randy Winkman said:

rev-erend said:

Lets hope that the stands are full of people.

Much more positive news about that on The Last Leg this evening. Sounds like a good effort has been made to rescue things. Fingers crossed.

I thought TLL was better in London but tonight's was a good'un all the same.

[FlyingMeeces]

cranford10 said:

Sorry but this leaves me cold. Whilst I don't doubt the commitment of the competitors, I have no interest in whether our dwarf can swim faster than yours.

And I've no interest in whether your bunch of overpaid idiots can kick a ball into a great big net more times than ours so I guess each to his own, eh?

(PS our [swimmer with] dwarf[ism] can indeed swim a hell of a lot faster than yours. )

[FlyingMeeces]

Sarah Storey absolutely obliterated that. Outstanding.

[FlyingMeeces]

Trabi601 said:

FlyingMeeces said:

Sarah Storey absolutely obliterated that. Outstanding.

I remain to be convinced that she should be competing. She is proof that, in many sports and categories at the paralympics, it's a competition to find the least disabled competitor.

Surely in pretty much every sport, Paralympic AND Olympic, what is going on is locating the most able/least disabled competitor? Like weight classes in martial arts and weightlifting, we break the categories up so that it's not just the biggest dude flattening everyone - but the winner in each weight class will still quite often be the heaviest within the class.

Storey effectively has one working hand - the other, small and without fingers, can bear weight on the handlebar but not grip or manipulate anything. Cyclists on road and track rely heavily on both of their arms being in full working order - particularly but not only both when climbing and sprinting. It can't be argued not to have an effect on her riding and indeed while she rides with a nondisabled team, she doesn't and cannot win stuff - she can't outclimb or outsprint someone with two working hands, for all that her legs clearly do a considerably better job than even the majority of nondisabled professional cyclists. As such seems fair she gets a Paralympic spot and once every 4 years is the best of her ilk, for a bit longer at least - the passing of time doesn't seem to have done anything bad to her yet!

[FlyingMeeces]

Trabi601 said:

As a British non-disabled champion and record holder, I still say it's very marginal that she should be competing. At the 2012 games it was obvious from the start of every race that she was nowhere near as impaired as her competitors. It was almost embarrassingly mis-matched at times.

You really can't draw a comparison with able bodied events - yes, it's a test to find out who has the best physique for their chosen sport, but the paralymic categories do very often pitch people with relatively minor disabilities against those who have a fairly severe impairment.

I love watching the paralympics, just wish it was a more level playing field, but admit it's bloody hard to work out equivalencies!

As a roadie she's never been British non-disabled champion, closest she got is third in ITT. Did take a track pursuit jersey in 2008 - before the crop of really world-class nondisabled riders came through, although if she ever sees this I hope she takes it in the spirit I intend it. She couldn't win it now - as in, even at her absolute peak as a track rider, she would never win against the current crop. She's never held a non-Paralympic record.

I have really mixed feelings too about events like C1-C3 all together - but that's a pretty limited effect of the decision to lump classifications together (and, generally then apply some sort of time weighting to even it out) rather than drop some events totally. It really doesn't happen much - all the track and field classifications and all the swimming ones are really well delineated with fairly minor steps up from one classification to the next (compare eg T35 and T36 hundred metre runners), doping-by-classification-fiddle notwithstanding. (Grrr bds.)

The swimming classification can look reeeeally squiffy until you realise that they're literally applying some sort of biomechanical formula that lets them see that moderate-severe cerebral palsy has about the same effect on your speed as amputation of 3 and a half limbs or partial paralysis of 4 limbs etc etc.

Boccia can be interestingly weird because alongside three fairly straightforward impairment groupings there's a catch-all classification for everyone that can't lob a ball halfway up a badminton court (they use a chute/ramp to roll it instead) and so the diversity of players can be really huge.

[FlyingMeeces]

Trabi601 said:

I know wiki isn't the font of all knowledge, however:

"Storey also competes against non-disabled athletes and won the 3 km national track pursuit championship in 2008, eight days after taking the Paralympic title,[49] and defended her title in 2009.[50] In 2014 she added a third national track title with a win in the points race.[51]"

"Storey attempted to break the world hour record at the Lee Valley VeloPark in London on 28 February 2015. She set a distance of 45.502 km, which was 563m short of Leontien Zijlaard-van Moorsel's 2003 overall world record – however Storey's distance did set a new world record in the C5 Paralympic cycling class as well as a new British record.[62]"

Now, given the restriction on 'pilot' cyclists in the visually impaired events (can't have been active in pro-cycling for 2 years, I recall) - how does this level with the above?

Oo, I withdraw my comment about not winning stuff nowadays then - genuinely impressed by that.

British record for the hour is because almost nobody bothers - I gather from Michael Hutchinson's (hilarious) book that sorting it all out with the UCI is a weapons-grade ballache - were I capable of sitting on a bike and coordinating the required bumf I'm fairly sure I could have spent a respectable period as British record-holder before Dame Sarah got around to her go.

Not sure how the pilot thing compares as they specifically need to be contributing eyes and not really legs to proceedings, stops everyone from just offering Wiggo et al a wodge of cash to pilot for them, which is obviously really different from what a not-very-impaired Paralympian might get up to on the most-of-every-year that there's no paracycling, and very few credible C5 opponents to compete against. Similar thing with running guides and whatever the hell they're going to be doing for the swim bit of the triathlon - guess professional head-dobbers like they use in the pool probably wouldn't cut it.

(Okay, probably not literally Wiggo, can't see that line of work suiting him…)

[FlyingMeeces]

Today was phenomenal… Kindred and Simmonds taking gold within minutes of each other, Aled Jones and whatshername his female equivalent with I think silver too.

Only wish I could spend more time watching, know I'm missing so much.

Rotten luck for the GB boccia squads - all 3 teams came away without a medal, the BC4 pair got damned close in the bronze medal match tho, coming 4th with a 3-2 loss must be maddening. Hopefully it'll go a bit better in the individual events, David Smith and Stephen McGuire must be a fair bet for medals.

[FlyingMeeces]

lufbramatt said:

Fantastic race but some really dodgy reporting there, the T13 winning time was about 23 seconds off overall world record pace. Also the 1500m at the Olympics was a very slow tactical race so the time is kind of irrelevant (winning time 3:50, I was an ok middle distance runner in my late teens and did a 3:54, but I was nowhere near international standard). Not to take anything away from the performance of the Paralympians, but the way they have reported it there is very misleading.

Just been doing some reading about the visual impairment classifications. I wear a pretty hefty prescription for short sightedness, and without my glasses I'd be eligible to run in the T13 classification (obviously my sight can be corrected so I can't) but no wonder I used to get so upset when teacher at school made me play rugby etc. with no glasses on. I effectively had the vision of someone that would be legally blind.

Edited by lufbramatt on Tuesday 13th September 11:56

Suspect you've read up more than me, but that sounds like you would be classifiable, if you wanted.

Basing that mostly on this site: http://www.britishblindsport.org.uk/classification...

[FlyingMeeces]

Kadeena Cox. Gold medal, world record, women's T38 400 metres. Completely and utterly bloody brilliant. Yelled myself hoarse.

I do hope she enjoys many many years of running like that.

[FlyingMeeces]

That's bloody brilliant.