If the Paralympic athletes sponsored by Össur and Ottobock were regarded as independent nations, both teams would have ranked among the top 20 in the overall medal count among the 162 countries that attended the 2021 Tokyo Games. Put the two together, and they piled up more gold medals than all but eight other entrants....
Hardly anyone remembers the name of the first person who ever played college football in NCAA Division I on a prosthetic leg. Do you?
Now that the Paralympics have gotten the sort of coverage they always deserved, does anybody still doubt whether these events are compelling enough to hold an audience? Not every storyline lived up to its billing, but enough of them did to make for a show that always entertained and frequently achieved high drama. Here are...
Team USA’s final medal Paralympic medal count ended up at 104, with 37 golds. Both figures rank as the second-highest in history, surpassed only by the 115 medals and 40 golds the Americans won five years ago in Rio. Amputee athletes made up about a third of Team USA’s overall Paralympic contingent, and they brought...
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...
Amputee athlete Katie Holloway fought doggedly to raise Paralympic athletes' medal bonuses to the same level as Olympic athletes. Here's what it took for her to succeed.
Amputee athlete Femita Ayanbeku surprised everyone, including herself, by making the 2016 Paralympic team. For the 2020 Paralympics, no one will be surprised if she brings home a medal.
Think you’re too out of shape to get active as an amputee? You might think again after viewing our photos from last weekend's Össur Mobility Clinic.
We combed US athletes' Instagram feeds to get a sense of their highs and lows in the wake of the Paralympic Trials. Here's a sampling of their reaction.
Amputee athlete Trenten Merrill thinks athletes and fans would benefit from a joint national meet that brings Olympians and Paralympians together in a single venue.
The Tokyo Paralympics are part of a larger, more important story: the normalization of limb difference and the changing cultural perceptions of disability.
Paralympic athletes are used to making adaptions, and the pandemic was no different. Some even used the down time to get stronger, faster, and more focused heading into Tokyo.
Iraq War veteran and three-time Paralympian Melissa Stockwell sees a lot of overlap between the duty to promote American values and the duty to raise amputees’ visibility.
Amputee athlete Desmond Jackson is blazing trails and advancing the cause of cultural inclusion for amputees, people with disabilities, and people of color.
In an exclusive interview, NBC Olympics president Gary Zenkel discusses the trends driving the network's beefed-up coverage of the Tokyo Paralympic Games.
Not many Paralympic sprinters have also starred in a Pulitzer Prize-winning play. That’s the remarkable journey of Katy Sullivan, a bilateral amputee who always viewed herself as an actor until her life took an unplanned detour into track and field.
While there’s never much actual reality in reality-based programming, the genre has nonetheless delivered a dollop of truth about limb loss to millions of viewers who otherwise might remain clueless.
The NCAA's nonsensical eligibility guidelines left Paralympic medal contender Hunter Woodhall with only one logical choice: turn pro.
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...
When COVID put the Paralympics on hold, amputee athlete Hunter Woodhall didn’t need long to figure out how to rechannel his energy. He launched a new company. And he didn’t worry about the stuff he couldn’t control.
LOSS OF A LIMB IS MORE THAN A PHYSICAL LOSS. While the change in a person’s body is obvious, it is not the only way amputees are changed by their experience. There are also a range of psychological impacts that come with limb loss. Some amputees might be uncomfortable expressing their emotional and psychological experiences while others might express their internal experiences openly. Whether or not one chooses to share his or her experience, the personal effects of limb loss are deep.