As usual, however, the athletes themselves managed to cut through the clutter and deliver indelible moments that reaffirm why the Paralympics matter. These are the American amputees whose exploits in Beijing made the biggest impression on us.
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Category: Paralympics
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Tears and Triumphs at the Winter Paralympics
The Paralympics have always been about more than winning and losing. Here's a sampling of perspectives from Beijing that show why the world is drawn to the Paralympic flame.
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Why Isn’t Speed Skating a Paralympic Sport?
Caitlin Conner spent years working on a speed skate for lower-limb amputees. Now she's moving on to an even bigger project: getting speed skating established as a Paralympic sport.
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Secret Lives of Team USA’s Amputee Athletes
Away from athletics, most amputees on the US Paralympic team are regular people with ordinary lives. By which we mean: They're as weird and wacky as the rest of us.
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Team USA’s Top Amputee Rookies at the Beijing Paralympics
A number of impressive newcomers have earned their berths on Team USA. Here are the first-time Winter Paralympians we're most excited to see next month in Beijing.
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Four Things to Know About Paralympic Skier Thomas Walsh
A childhood cancer survivor and above-knee amputee, Thomas Walsh is an all-around ski talent who can vie for the podium in all four alpine disciplines.
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Courtney Godfrey Wants to Make Some News at the Beijing Paralympics
TV reporter Courtney Godfrey is trying to become a first-time Paralympian at age 37. If she succeeds, she’ll be one of Team USA’s unlikeliest members.
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Top Amputee Performers at World Para Snow Sports Championships
The Winter Paralympics are approaching, and the World Para Snow Sports Championships provided a sneak preview of Team USA's top amputee performers.
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The Grandfather of Adaptive Skiing
Among prosthetists, Paul Leimkuehler is well remembered as a trail-blazing practitioner who helped establish the standards of the profession. But Leimkuehler’s other major contribution to the limb-loss community was nearly forgotten until last year. That’s when his granddaughter, Katie Leimkuehler, unveiled Fresh Tracks, her documentary about Paul Leimkuehler’s invention of the outrigger adaptive ski in...
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2022 Winter Paralympics: Amputee FAQ
Through 1992, the Winter and Summer Olympic/Paralympics were always held in the same calendar year. It was only in 1994 that the IOC modified the schedule to create a staggered cycle, with Summer Games during leap years and Winter Games two years later. Because of the one-year pandemic delay, the calendar has temporarily reverted to...
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Paralympic Swimmer Mohammad Abbas Karimi Brings Hope to Refugees
One of the most remarkable performers at the US Paralympic Trials wasn’t even eligible for a spot on Team USA. Mohammad Abbas Karimi, a bilateral arm amputee from Afghanistan, earned a spot on the International Refugee Paralympic Team as a swimmer.
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Adaptive Spirit: 25 Years of Support for the Paralympics
A quarter-century is an impressive run for any fundraiser, but Adaptive Spirit merits an extra tip of the cap: It literally saved the US Paralympic Ski Team from oblivion back in the mid-1990s. In the years since, Adaptive Spirit has helped Team USA roll up more Winter Paralympic medals than any other nation.
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Tokyo 2020 Paralympics: International Treasures
Meet five world-class amputee athletes who will be contending for medals in Tokyo this summer at the 2020 Paralympic Games.
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Backcountry Skiing Hacks for Amputees
Above-elbow amputee Matt Meredith has written his own how-to manual for backcountry skiing, while tuning out the doubts of able-bodied skiers who consider the sport too dangerous for an adaptive athlete.
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Ezra Frech Feels the Love
He won’t turn 16 until May, but Ezra Frech already has a higher profile than most Paralympic athletes. As the co-founder of Angel City Sports, Frech (rhymes with “tech”) has helped open doors to athletic opportunity for thousands of people with limb difference and other disabilities. After grabbing silver medals in the long jump and...
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Will the 2021 Paralympics Be Cancelled?
Amputee athletes and other Paralympians are supposed to start competing on August 24. Will COVID allow the Games to go forward?
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5 Amputee Paralympians on the Rise
Meet five amputee athletes who hope not only to make their Paralympic debuts in Tokyo later this year, but to win medals there.
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Move United Enlarges the Tent for Adaptive Sports
When Adaptive Sports USA and Disabled Sports USA merged earlier this year to form Move United, the new entity instantly became the nation’s largest adaptive sports network. Now it’s setting the stage for further growth by creating a new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Leadership Team. Designed to attract new participants from low-income populations and...
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Proud to Be a Paralympian
Below-knee amputee Nichole Millage has won a gold medal and two silvers in her three previous trips to the Paralympics. The 2021 Tokyo Games will be her last hurrah.
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Worthy Endeavors
Despite the virtual format for the 2020 Endeavor Games, the jitters Anthony Quinn felt before he ran his race were very real.
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Jumping for June
Given that most pro and amateur athletes remain sidelined by the pandemic, June is shaping up as a surprisingly active month on the adaptive sports calendar.
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Inside Paralympians’ Quest for Equality
After finally breaking through to win Paralympic gold in 2016, Katie Holloway was beyond stoked. She and her teammates on the U.S. women’s sitting volleyball team had ended eight years of frustration and finally topped their arch rivals from China, to whom they’d lost the Paralympic championship match in both 2008 and 2012.
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Parasports Pioneers Join Forces
If this week's historic merger between Disabled Sports USA (DSUSA) and Adaptive Sports USA (ASUSA) caught you by surprise, you’re not alone. It kind of snuck up on the two organizations themselves, who will operate jointly from now on as Move United.
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Adaptive Spirit Adapts
It doesn’t seem like very long ago that we were talking up the 25th anniversary of Adaptive Spirit—and, in fact, it wasn’t long ago at all. But everything has changed since then, and Adaptive Spirit has gone the way of every other gathering of more than 10 people. Given that this annual fundraiser accounts for...
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Coronavirus: What Amputees Know
“Amputees don’t focus on what they don’t have,” says Patrick Quinn. “They work with what they do have, and they find ways to maximize it.”
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World Para Surfing Championship: Meet the Winners
The sports world wasn’t entirely dormant over the weekend, as the World Para Surfing Championship proceeded to its conclusion on Saturday. The United States earned silver in the team competition (Spain took the gold), and several amputees (including Americans Colin Cook and Liv Stone) won individual gold medals—fittingly so, since the Association of Amputee Surfers...
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NCAA Indoor Track Championships
Our latest conversation with Hunter Woodhall comes on the eve of the NCAA Indoor Track and Field National Championships.
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1st Person: My First 10K as an Amputee
We got a lot of positive feedback last month on Angie Heuser’s first-person story about learning to surf. So we asked her if we could share another episode from her life — this time about the trials of her first 10K race post-amputation. Both articles come from her blog, Stepping Out in Faith. Thanks, Angie,...
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Second Edition of The Paralympian Now Available
The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has released the final 2018 edition of its magazine The Paralympian, which reflects on a busy year of World Championships and looks ahead to a new Paralympic Winter Games cycle. Download an online copy at http://paralympics.uberflip.com/i/1059743-the-paralympian-dec-2018. Also, to watch videos and subscribe to ParalympicSport.TV, visit www.youtube.com/ParalympicSportTV.
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Retired Soldiers Benefit From Wheelchair Rugby
If you have never witnessed wheelchair rugby in person, you should make it a point to do so. The sound of the wheelchairs rushing up and down the court and the metal-on-metal collision of those same wheelchairs is an experience in and of itself. The athletes maneuver their chairs with grace, finesse, and ferocity all...