10 Amazing Paralympic Athletes to Follow

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The Paralympics began last week with an Opening Ceremony at the Olympic Stadium featuring world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking and highlighting scientific advances including Newton’s discovery of the theory of relativity and the Higg’s Boson.

The games have not been without controversy and drama. A sell-out audience of 80,000 was silent in shock on Sunday after South African Oscar Pistorius suffered his first-ever defeat in the 200m, losing by 0.13 seconds to Alan Fonteles Cardoso Oliveira of Brazil. Pistorius claimed that the winner’s prosthetic blades were too long.

One of the games’ major sponsors, information technology company Atos, has been engulfed in a controversy about disability tests that, many charge, have wrongly led to people with disabilities in the UK being deprived of benefits. Under Prime Minister David Cameron’s austerity reforms, disability benefits totaling in the billions of pounds could be cut. Disability advocates have noted that, outside of high-profile events like the Paralympics, individuals with disabilities are too often invisible and an afterthought.

Amid all this are the games themselves and, most of all, the athletes with physical and intellectual disabilities who are competing. Here are some of their stories.

(Athletes in the Paralympics are given a classification based on the extent to which an impairment gives them a competitive disadvantage; the Guardian has a complete guide to the classifications as well as some explanatory graphics.)

1. 20-year-old Hannah “Hurricane” Cockroft of Great Britain was told that she “would never be able to do anything [her] whole life and wouldn’t live past [her] teenage years.” She experienced two cardiac arrests during her birth, leaving her with brain damage and deformed legs and feet. Cockroft won the gold in the T34 100 meters before a sell-out crowd.

2. Another British athlete, 15-year-old Jessica Jane Applegate, has Asperger’s Syndrome and just had an operation on her left foot last month. The swimmer won the gold in the S14 200 meters on Sunday.

3. 32-year-old Derek Derenalagi lost both legs below the knees serving in the British army in Afghanistan and was declared dead until doctors detected a faint pulse. He did not make the finals in the F57/58 discus but still received a “hero’s welcome” from 80,000 fans.

4. 18-year-old Darragh McDonald of Ireland won a gold medal in the S6 400m freestyle. Born missing part of his right arm below the elbow and both legs below the knee, his father Derek McDonald told the Irish Times that “I never thought we’d be here [in the Paralympic final] when we started out 18 years ago.”

5. 6. British brothers Sam and Oliver Hynd — both have neuromuscular myopathy, a degenerative condition that severely weakens their leg muscles — took the silver and bronze in the S8 400 meter freestyle right under the eyes of their parents. As the Telegraph observes, “brotherly love won the day here.”

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Photo by Vix_B

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Ray C.

1:04AM PDT on Sep 25, 2012

for me, I for one can't not see anything amazing about the Paralympic's sends out the wrong message to Governments in relation to the Disabled people who are unable to work and pay their own way,

1000's of disabled people in the UK are have their benefits stop and force into work by the British Government, this to me is not amazing more of a disgrace and needs to be stop now, I am a great believe in fair play,

the British Government now will use these Paralympic's to Harass the disable people in the UK in doing something that they know full well they can't so ask yourselves is it right and is it just, my answer to this is NO.

every disabled person in the UK have a right to benefits and be paid such benefit, I believe that this right is now been taken away as the Government expects the disable person be like a Paralympic Athletes if they can do it, so can you, this what the British Government will say now to a disabled person in the UK. not so amazing as yourselves think.

September 25
send a green star

Zsuzsanna K.

4:48AM PDT on Sep 15, 2012

Amazing people!Congrats!

September 15
send a green star

Penny B.

9:54AM PDT on Sep 14, 2012

Great games, truly amazing!

September 14
send a green star

Barb S.

5:40AM PDT on Sep 14, 2012

Thanks for sharing, it was an amazing games

Wayne L.

4:51PM PDT on Sep 13, 2012

Watched the Para Olympics. They are amazing people. What we take for granted they have to work really hard for.It makes you feel just how lucky one is. God Bless them all.