Some of these Paralympic events are insane. There was lads with no arms doing the butterfly swimming earlier and completely blind lads now doing the long jump.
Will Downing steering the ship on RTE commentary
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The para Olympics are brought into disrepute by the grading systems, which are played, especially by GB for instance.
I remember one swimming race where a lad who looked perfectly able bodied pipped a lad to the gold who had no arms.
Many people registered as blind are not completely blind, and have good peripheral or good central vision.
Itâs hard to credit half the grading systems really. You just gotta go with the astonishing nature of it. The Brits are great for pushing the injured squaddies into it all the same
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Itâs a joke, some lads claiming to be eligible havenât a leg to stand on
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Conversely, some people who are supposedly of perfect sight are in fact completely blind.
There are a load of them on this forum. They identify themselves as the OIUTF cult.
Will has educated me on the 3 categories of visual impairment. The ones currently doing long jump are completely blind
I have a friend who has a few para olympic swimming gold medals. She was born with one arm missing from the elbow, like the Irish lass I think.
She says that if you lose an arm in an accident or whatever, itâs thought you are at a significant advantage over a person born that way, as your trunk and shoulder muscle is still there, in a way that it never was for a congenital limb absence.
This may be balanced at present by amputee or injured people taking to the sport they compete in later, only after injury, but the grading system doesnât sit right, and youâd want to be an extremely brave assessor to risk all sorts of accusations if you disagree with the athleteâs own assessment, especially in a potentially hateful country like England.
As a nod to the above, her boyfriend is registered blind, but does the triathlon. When I got to know her well, I used to joke asking did she think he knew she only had one arm?
He does the triathlon. Heâs registered fully blind, but has peripheral vision, and was easily able to train in the top lane of the club, being able to see turns and that. In the triathlon, they have to go on a tandem with another sighted cyclist on the front, which always made me think that one lad or lady could have some flute dragged out of the pub, and another an elite level pro.
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My cousin is legally blind since birth. He can see, but not far. He went to school in Dublin for a few years to the school for blind boys but didnât like it and came back to the regular secondary at home. Heâs one of my best friends - weâre the same age and he grew up half a mile over the road - and I usually forget that he has a visual impairment.
Heâs never done sports competitively, but does run, swim and cycle a small bit. He canât legally drive but used to drive tractors down backroads when he was 15 or 16 to go for Sunday pints. There were lots of jobs he couldnât do because of his sight, but works in Canada now as a sound engineer type.
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Is she the famous âClaire Swimmingâ
No thatâs a different Claire.
This Claire has moved back to Loughborough.
Loughborough University is some spot for sports. Was on the campus before
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Youâd better buy me a pint for the ânice postâ youâre about to get.
Go onâŚ
I nice post badge isnât worth a fuck mate
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The lad with no arms playing table tennis with bat in his mouth and serving ball up
off his foot is unreal. His opponent has arms.
Iâd a theory that as technology improved with the running blades that the Paralympics runners would beat the Olympics runner but they clamped down on the technology
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