From the AFP and the New York Times:

A Paralympic wheelchair race will be repeated on Friday, even after medals were awarded, because the first race on Monday ended in a crash involving multiple athletes.

The incident occurred near the end of the race when Switzerland’s Edith Hunkeler swerved into another racer at more than 15 miles an hour. The incident caused a pile-up that took six athletes out of the race, including all three medallists from the 2004 Athens Paralympics — Hunkeler, Japan’s Wakako Tsuchida, and Cheri Blauwet from the United States. Hunkeler and Wakako were hospitalized following the crash.

“I call something like this an occupational hazard of wheelchair racing,” Blauwet, also a student at Stanford Medical School, said in a telephone interview afterward. “What we do, anything can happen. Everyone’s out to win — it’s part of why what we do is so exciting. It’s very high stakes.”

Long wins second gold of Games — Baltimore Sun:

U.S. Paralympic swimmer Jessica Long of Maryland, whose legs were amputated below the knee when she was thirteen months old, wins the women’s 100-meter butterfly and earns her second gold at the Beijing Games.

An extended feature about Long is here.

“If [Michael Phelps] can win eight golds, then I can take seven,” she said. “I’ve been visualizing my races for months. His success made it that much more real for me.”

Olympic swimmer Du Toit wins Paralympic gold — New York Times

The art and science of wheelchair basketball — New York Times

(AFP photo)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 12:32 pm and is filed under Paralympics, exercise/sports, wheelchair. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post