Dual Paralympian Jones wins first Summer Games medal

The big story in Paralympic sports this summer has been the efforts of two South Africans trying to earn the right to compete against able-bodied athletes at the Beijing Olympics. Natalie du Toit was successful in the open-water swim, and track athlete Oscar Pistorius will continue his quest toward 2012. In their shadow are athletes who push the limits of versatility by excelling in two sports in different seasons. This year, the lone American doing the summer/winter Paralympics double is cyclist-alpine skier Allison Jones.At the 2006 Torino Winter Paralympics, Jones won a gold medal in the slalom, and at the 2002 Salt Lake Games, she earned silver medals in giant slalom and super-G at age 17. In between, she made her summer Paralympics debut at the 2004 Athens Games, competing in the one-kilometer sprint on a track bike and the 21-kilometer time trial on the road. In Beijing earlier this week, Jones competed in the 500-meter time trial, finishing sixth and the three-kilometer individual pursuit, finishing eighth. On Friday, Jones captured her first Paralympics Summer Games medal, winning a silver medal in the 24-kilometer time trial on the road.On Friday, Jones was able to pass three competitors that started before her and did not get passed by Germany’s Natalie Simanowski, who started behind her. “I just rode my heart out,” she said after the race.Jones was born without a femur in her right leg, a non-hereditary birth defect called proximal femoral focal deficiency. Her tibia and fibula were located where the femur should have been, and when Allison was seven months old, doctors amputated her foot and fused the hip socket. Four months later, she received her first prosthetic leg, but Jones does not wear it when she competes in either sport. Jones had been a skier all her life, but she didn’t start cycling seriously until 1999. “I live a stone’s throw from the velodrome [at the Olympic Training Center] in Colorado Springs,” she said by phone from Beijing earlier this week. “At night you can see the lights from our house. Whenever they were on, my mom would take me to see the races. One night, we saw the lights and assumed it was a local race, but it turned out to be the 1998 IPC Disabled World Championships. When I got there I saw a bunch of gimpy people riding around the track and thought, ‘Well, I can do this, too.’“I had never ridden more than a kids’ bike,” she said. “My mom grabbed the first American we could see, and it happened to be Chris Carmichael [who went on to coach Lance Armstrong to seven Tour de France victories]. Chris was just starting his coaching business, and he pointed me to a local coach.”So in early 1999, while waiting for the snow to thaw on the velodrome, the local coach taught Jones to ride a track bike on a grassy field. She was hooked. Jones competes with minor modifications to her bike. There is no pedal on the right side. Until 2005, she rode with her right side unsupported and unprotected, except for a little piece of tape on the bike that would let her know where the rear wheel was.“Some of the male riders [with one leg] would use devices for stability,” she said. “But I ruled it off because I have good balance from ski racing. I said, ‘I don’t need it.’Jones has an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering and her father, Jay, builds Formula 1 racing airplanes. The two started tinkering and came up with a useful device Jones calls a “stump cup,” a carbon fiber attachment on which she can rest her right side. “It doesn’t turn the crank arm, but it grounds my stump so I can get more leverage on my sound [left] side,” she said. “I can stand on the climbs and sprints now. It allows me to get full extension on my leg and lets me put full weight on the pedal without having to stand up and sit down all the time. I changed the design two months ago, and it’s 90 percent to my satisfaction.” Jones used her updated version on her track bike and the older one on her road bike.In the three-kilometer individual pursuit in Beijing, Jones placed eighth and broke her personal record by six seconds -- a margin so large, she said, “It’s nuts! And it’s the event that I hate the most. It’s four minutes of pure and agonizing pain, and you might realize at the end that you [made a mistake] at the beginning but it’s too late. Whereas in the 500, if you screw up, it’s over so quickly there’s nothing you can do.”Jones’ times are calculated without modification, unlike some of the other competitors in her class who receive time deductions because they are have less functionality. Each sport has different classifications, and in cycling, Jones is considered to be an LC3 (one lower limb disability and pedaling only on one side). She competes for medals in the same category as LC4 athletes (a more severe disability, usually affecting both lower limbs) and CP3 (cerebral palsy). Heading into Beijing, Jones felt her medal chances were best in road racing’s time trial, but wasn’t sure why. “I do well in it, but I train with the sprint athletes,” she said. “I wouldn’t even race it in the [United] States, but I’d get to an international race and pull a good result. No one could explain it. They don’t know where it comes from because I never train with the distance guys. But this year, we actually focused on [the road more] so I could get a little more out of it.”It paid off. On Friday, the 24-year-old Jones won a silver medal with the fastest time of the day on the 24-kilometer -- mostly uphill -- time trial course. She was edged out of the gold medal by her teammate Barbara Buchan because Buchan, a CP3, received a 5.081-percent time deduction, which translated to a two minute, 14.15 second advantage.Members of the U.S. Ski Team have been watching Jones compete online from their dry-land training camp in Colorado Springs. Fellow skier Brad Washburn, for one, is eager to have her back. Washburn grew up racing with Jones at Winter Park, Colo. At the 2006 Torino Winter Paralympics, he was in the start house for the second run of the slalom and when he saw Jones’ gold-medal [slalom] time on a scoreboard, he said he was “so stoked” that he skied a solid run and moved up five places, into 10th -- “but she knocked that course out of the water.”“I can’t believe she’s doing two sports,” Washburn said. “It’s amazing she can pull it off. Skiing is tough enough.”

Women para-athletes pursue Olympic spirit

Safia Djelal of Algeria prepares to throw the javalin in the final of the women's Javalin F57/58 event during the 2008 Beijing Paralympic Games at the National Stadium in the Chinese capital on September 11, 2008. [Agencies]

Athletes run in the heats of the women's 200m T46 event during the 2008 Beijing Paralympic Games at the National Stadium in the Chinese capital on September 11, 2008. [Agencies]

Nakhumicha Zakayo of Kenya throws the javalin in the final of the women's Javalin F57/58 event during the 2008 Beijing Paralympic Games at the National Stadium in the Chinese capital on September 11, 2008. [Agencies]

Tang Qi of China cycles during the women's individual pursuit track cycling of the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing on September 10, 2008. [Agencies]

Yousra Ben Jemaa from Tunisia takes a throw during the final of the women's discus F32-34 classification event at the 2008 Beijing Paralympic Games in Beijing on September 10, 2008. [Agencies]
Safia Djelal of Algeria prepares to throw the javalin in the final of the women's Javalin F57/58 event during the 2008 Beijing Paralympic Games at the National Stadium in the Chinese capital on September 11, 2008.

Paralympics should be renamed 'Superlympics'

Like many people, I've always seen the Olympics as the ‘main' sporting event every four years- the headline act- and the Paralympics as something of an add-on- the supporting act. It you are not disabled yourself it is hard to understand some of the games and the athletes' mobility problems.
But being in the host city for these Paralympics has changed my perspective. I've come to realize these athletes are nothing short of super-heroes. Deprived of physical abilities we take for granted, they make up for them and then some; they test their senses and the boundaries of physical ability to extremes that the Bolts and Phelpses of this world will never have to.
If Usain Bolt had to undergo a double-amputation, I wonder if he would strap two carbon fiber blades to his knees like Oscar Pistorious, aka Blade Runner, of South Africa, and re-learn everything that had once come naturally.
If Michael Phelps suddenly became blind, would he have the courage to still surge through the water, not knowing when he will reach the end of the pool, like Donovan Tildesley? Would any of us have the guts to turn around a life-changing experience like a car crash or bad rugby scrum, and not only get our lives back on track but then strive to be the best at a sport?
‘What Paralympic sport would you do if you were disabled?', was a water-cooler question I posed today. It's not something you would normally think about. You don't watch TV as a kid aspiring to be a Paralympian. But it takes more than early mornings, training programs and special diets to get to the Paralympics. It takes a tragedy or loss that will have been grieved, worked through and overcome.
If you've ever tried walking with your eyes closed you will know how difficult it is to have the nerve to do so, even if it's in a home you've lived in for years. Now imagine running with your eyes closed… Now imagine running 100m as fast as you can with nothing holding you back. China's Wu Chunmiao did this on September 9 in a time of 12.31 seconds.
Skiing is terrifying enough if you have all your faculties. Standing at the top of a ski slope, it's a battle of wills for most people to launch themselves, but Canada's Donovan Tildesley who has been blind from birth, revealed to a China Daily reporter this week that not only does he already ski, but he wants to take it up competitively.
Super-heroes indeed; each and every one. The Paralympics should be renamed the Superlympics. It's nothing to do with the equality denoted by the Greek “para”, it's about “super” ability, courage and strength that most of us, the top able-bodied athletes of the world included, will never have to muster.
It's worth remembering that many Paralympians are here because they've picked up horrific injuries while living life to the full. You don't get paralyzed sitting at home playing on a Nintendo after all. And having lived life to the full they are not prepared to stop. That's the lesser talked about ‘Paralympic spirit'.
I only hope that if life deals me or my loved ones similar blows we will tackle them in the same way as the men and women we are lucky enough to be sharing Beijing with at the moment.

Sailing capital of Qingdao, China

Foreign athletes are frequently played "Thank you!" Slogan

September 7, the Beijing Paralympic Games wheelchair basketball game, the Swedish team in the match played at the end of the "Hello, Beijing" and "Thank you!" Slogan. ( "CCTV.com" 2008年9 Jul) Coincidentally, just last night held in the Beijing Paralympics opening ceremony, Germany's admission in the national flag on display in Chinese writing, "Beijing, hello" four Chinese characters, in the recent Olympic Games in Beijing , The U.S. team girls in the August 23 in the synchronized swimming finals collective project-on-demand free admission, the same with a smile played Gonggongzhengzheng "Thank you, China" The Scarlet Letter Landi banner. Very often, "Thank you" is unable to use language and words to express, and "thank you" to the "China" and "Beijing", even more mixed feelings, imagination. People will not forget that the international community, especially the Western world on the Beijing Olympics, the controversy over what happened, by the criticism, given the concern, has reached an unprecedented pan-"politicization" of the so-called "314" to suppress riots in Lhasa, the so-called The human rights situation in China, and other unwarranted charges, is only a very small number of anti-China forces to stigma, to smear China, to achieve the sinister intention of deceiving the world public opinion only. After the storm, in the face of brilliant, must Midazolam incomparably the Beijing Olympics, individual athletes, "wearing masks" Immigration has become Xiaoliao, a small number of media Chuaizhao "magnifying glass" has become redundant, replaced by the heartfelt praise, even anti - , The vanguard of a Western political leaders have advocated "the gold medal to China!" In the "nest" and "Water Cube", in association with the city and all the competition venues, Phelps, Boult, one flashing The glory of the name in China, breaking the record, in Beijing created glorious. Beijing Olympics excellent organizational work, strict security measures, warm and thoughtful service, to the athletes, to the world left a deep and beautiful memory. Have friends come from afar hive! Confucius's "The Analects of Confucius" at the opening ceremony on the already spread all over the world, and similarly, in the Paralympic flame has been ignited, the Paralympic Games in the contest has already begun the day, the Chinese Government and people will once again The world a pleasant surprise: China is fully capable of contractors term "unique, high-level" of the Paralympic Games, "two Olympics, the same brilliant" commitment will be honoured in full, the perfect ending go down in history, the Chinese people. Hospitality will once again impressed the world. "Thank you!" This is the most concise enrichment, the most simple words, the most sincere expression! "Courtesy of contacts" is the traditional Chinese virtues, at this point in time, we would like to disabled athletes and also to the people of the world, a "Thank you!" Thanks to our world, to show China the opportunity to thank the Olympic Games yesterday, given China " Higher, faster, stronger "the confidence and strength, thanks to the Chinese Paralympic Games today," Beyond, integration, sharing "concept and spirit of the Paralympic closing Daidao, China and the world will go near, With a more aggressive global paste, to the glorious Paralympics Bosa humanity "and a take-off dream," Xiang, anywhere in the world and mankind!

Beichuan folding wings, "Little Swan" light up the Paralympic Games!

Human sound just-concluded Olympic Games, its wonderful to what extent, would not have to mention! From a variety of the sound of praise we will be able to feel this session of the Olympic Games to the world submitted a cuisine! I believe for many years, people again recalled Zhang Wang, also still have a mouth-Yuxiang, extending the tongue volume,回味无穷! September 6, the opening of the Paralympics, it's a unique way to show people in the world before, when a called "never stops the dance steps," the program, a presentation of the wings, "Little Swan" light up the residual Olympics! People all know this little girl Jiaoli, she is just a general love of ballet girls, but the fate of Zhuonong in Wenchuan earthquake shocked the whole world in her left leg lost, a love for the ballet girls, lost his left leg, is She had broken wings. However, she did not want to give in to dance the dream of cruel fate. God is cruel to her, but a true feelings in the world. Many people have extended her a helping hand, perhaps she is fortunate individuals, because many like her, like a little girl, the disaster is coming, not to fight in and out with friends and family invited, it To leave this world! On this special day, Li re-dance, she symbolizes the strength of life, no human disaster has Yabu Kua dream! When we saw her son sitting in a wheelchair, wearing a red Wuxie his right foot, slowly open arms, in the night sky in Manmiao and dance. I do not know what language to praise, but I know I have been deeply wins with. At the same time, I found that while many people's mouth hung smile, but it含着the eyes of tears, had not been concluded a long time! I do not know the girl or touched by Li proud! This evening, perhaps we see a lot of Xuanli colorful programs, but the people, "Little Swan" Li undoubtedly plays a role, eyes, she is the Paralympics opening ceremony of the actress, is in the fairy tale princess, she To show the world the glory of humanity! Life is a very strange thing, when you face the negative, it becomes very fragile and can not withstand the storms that will begin depression depression when you face a strong, it has become very strong, no matter How much the storm, it is still tall and straight. When the end of the opening, many Xuanli colorful programs, such as short-lived, some become blurred, but I do not know why only the presentation of the wings, "Little Swan" Li's moves, still a clear surface in front of us! As she storms in the Swallow to fly on stage and realizing their dreams! She dances to the glory of human nature, human positive and progressive spirit of this moment, she and the passing away of the compatriots in the disaster, and with the world, with the same dream.

Beautiful deaf girl opening ceremony of the interpretation of art (AP)

In Beijing Paralympics opening ceremony of the performances, most of the power of history will be the largest deaf sign language dance, appear in the "nest" of the deaf sign language dance called "Hello stars," Origin Since all parts of the country's 320 girls involved in the deaf performers. They will sign language and body language interpretation of a section of the romantic stories, and sign language to express "Tonight the stars than ever, I was under the Stars particularly beautiful." Map was wearing a white gown, carefully dressed the Deaf Girl.