My Paralympics Column: Where the Paralympic Winter Games Begin – Sport
In Tyrol one falls softly at the moment. It is snowing so heavily that some drivers are now learning how to attach snow chains to the car tires in the hustle and bustle of the white flakes. Finally really winter again! In 1984 and 1988, the participants of the first two “World Games of the Disabled” in the Innsbruck region also got to know him.
On the private snowboard trip to the Tyrolean ski area Axamer Lizum during the Berlin winter holidays, sports history is now catching up with me. The alpine competitions were held in Mutter a few minutes away by ski bus. And a short drive away, Nordic skiers once fought for medals on the plateau in Seefeld/Leutasch – where our group of winter sports holidaymakers is braving themselves against strong headwinds on the cross-country ski run.
Down in Innsbruck, former Austrian President Kurt Waldheim praised the athletes at the opening ceremony in January 1988 as “an impressive example of overcoming life’s difficulties”. I discovered this sports-historical excursion into para history in an Austrian YouTube film.
At least this symbolic bow to the athletes is unchanged. Worlds have changed in other areas. I never thought I would be so skeptical about the Paralympics. Under corona conditions, under human rights aspects, your blood can freeze in your veins.
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In his Olympic television report on Tuesday evening, the former German ski racer Felix Neureuther had a Uyghur woman tearfully tell of how Chinese police officers raped members of the Muslim minority, the three women then pushed the electric shock batons into the vagina and perversely enjoyed the suffering. I’m writing this down so clearly because that’s what I’ll have in mind as I watch the Paralympics out of respect for the athletes and their teams.
In my hotel in Götzens, anyone can start something with the Paralympics on request, even decades after the selected games here in the region. The nice Irish hotel worker Aisling Hughes and her Australian husband have friends and acquaintances in the Olympic and Paralympic sports scene, like the Australian para-canoe trainer Andrea Wood.
After the 2014 games in Sochi, winter sports athletes told her how strange it was when there was a knock on the door, they were picked up in isolation for blood tests and competitions, everything was very limited. “And people now have respect for the artificial snow in China,” says Aisling Hughes during the talk at the breakfast buffet. Artificial snow is much more prone to injury, she says, and the falls of the monoskiers: inside on the bumpy slopes of Sochi come to mind, I still remember the roar of the rescue helicopters.
As always in Beijing 2022, once the Paralympic flame is lit, still be able to watch sports. The dusty hills in the snowless mountains are sprayed with artificial white in such a way that at least everywhere the broadcast cameras turn, snow is supposed to be visible to keep up appearances.
Despite everything, great Paralympic sport will also be on display in Beijing
According to the German Disabled Sports Association, Team Germany Paralympics with nine male and nine male athletes will be on their way to Beijing on February 25th for the Paralympic Winter Games from March 4th to 13th. It’s a young team, accompanied by five guides in the sport of Nordic para skiing and an accompanying runner in alpine para skiing. This makes the team slightly smaller than in Pyeongchang 2018 (20 participants) and slightly larger than in Sochi 2014 (13).
In addition to the trainers, there are also doctors and supervisors, so that the German Paralympics delegation includes a total of 63 people. At the second Paralympics in Beijing after the 2008 Summer Games, a total of 736 athletes from around 50 nations are to fight for medals and best performances in six sports and in 78 decisions. German athletes will be represented in the sports of para alpine skiing, para biathlon and para cross-country skiing, as well as in para snowboarding for the second time since 2014.
The Team Germany Winter Paralympics is in transition, seven athletes are 22 years old or younger and nine participants are looking forward to their Paralympics premiere – half of the team. Three athletes will make their Paralympic debuts in China in banked slalom and snowboard cross. The most experienced athlete is para-alpine skier Andrea Rothfuss, who will compete in her fifth Paralympics. Andrea Eskau, the six-time medalist from 2018, had to cancel her participation with a heavy heart due to ongoing physical problems.
In Innsbruck and the surrounding area, too, some people will be following the Beijing 2022 games on the Internet and on television with curiosity. Nicole Ellinger from the Alp Art Hotel Götzens, where the author is typing these lines, remembers the South Korean ski team for athletes with disabilities, which accommodated them in their own house in 2021. The fact that they made it up to the classic Olympic women’s downhill run with the Olympiastelzenbahn connected me deeply. This is an adventure for sighted and standing snowboarders alone, many stairs, steep slopes.
There are no equivalent conditions for fair games in China
Just as the young Gerhard Pscheider touched me in the old Paralympics documentation from 1988. When the then successful athlete told the film with his forerunner Peter Erlsbacher that a few years ago his optic nerves were damaged in a skiing accident and how he skied the turns without seeing the calls and gut feeling. In 1988, the Nordic athlete Horst Morokutti, who was injured by a double arm, gave a moving account of how his sporting successes help him to gain self-confidence.
The time seems to have stayed when the athletes complained about their own situation in Germany that the USA and Canada promote disabled sports in such a way that the competition can train all year round and don’t have to go to work.
Equivalent conditions for fair games cannot exist in China 2022, if only because of the corona pandemic. Despite all the challenges, may all opportunities fall as softly as I do right here on the slopes.