It has now been a week since the closing ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Paralympics took place, marking the end of this year's edition of the Games. Beginning on the 4th of March, this was the 13th Winter Paralympics to ever be held, 46 years after the inaugural Games in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden in 1976. As the host, Beijing is the only city to ever have hosted both the Summer and Winter Paralympic Games, and thereby also the only city that has hosted all four of the main Olympic and Paralympic Games. During the nine-day duration of the Games, 564 athletes competed in 78 events across six different sports. While the coronavirus pandemic was one of the main concerns during the Winter Olympics held a month earlier, it was something entirely different that characterised the Paralympics: Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine, which to date has killed thousands, left 6.5 million internally displaced, and forced more than 3 million people to flee the country. Whilst the intention of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) was initially to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete, albeit under neutral flag, it was forced to backtrack after receiving vehement criticism and threats of boycott from numerous participating nations. The IPC finally made the decision to prohibit Russia and Belarus from competing, just as the Games were about to begin – on the evening of the opening ceremony, which was held on the 3rd of March.
This once again proves that the world of sports cannot be separated from what is happening outside it, no matter how much the International Olympic and Paralympic Committees would like that to be the case. While this was of course a hard blow for the affected individual athletes, who had put in hours and hours of hard work to pursue their Paralympic dreams, the world's reaction to Russia's blatant violation of international law and complete disregard of the immense human suffering that their actions have given rise to, meant that there was simply no other solution than for the IPC to use their strongest tool of sanction: to ban them from participation. Meanwhile, the president of Ukraine's National Paralympic Committee (NPC) described its athletes' presence at the Games as a “miracle”, referring to the challenges they have had to face to even be able to travel to China to compete in the face of war. In spite of the crisis and utter chaos in their home country, and being forced to worry about friends and family left behind, having to flee or fight for their lives, the Ukrainian athletes showed incredible strength and resilience during the Games, demonstrating just how tenacious they are. In true Paralympic spirit, they gave their all, competing not only for their own sakes, but to show, as the Ukrainian NPC president said, that “Ukraine is and will remain a country”, and that their participation is “a symbol to show that Ukraine is alive”.
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, the athletes competed in six different sports. These were alpine skiing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, para ice hockey, snowboarding, and wheelchair curling. Alpine skiing consists of five different events which are essentially the same as those at the Olympics: downhill, slalom, giant slalom, super-G (short for super giant slalom), and super combined (downhill + slalom). These are further divided into three categories for athletes with varying disabilities: standing, sitting, and visually impaired. The standing category includes athletes who have different disabilities in their upper and/or lower limbs, while the sitting category includes athletes with impairments in both legs. The visually impaired category includes athletes who are blind or have severe vision impairments that affect their visual acuity and visual field. Athletes in this category ski behind a sighted guide who acts as their eyes, giving verbal directions that enable them to adeptly navigate the course in spite of their impairment. The same categories are used for biathlon and cross-country skiing. Biathlon combines skiing and shooting, and consists of three events of differing length: 6, 10, and 12.5 km. In contrast to alpine skiing, which is done down a slope, cross-country skiing involves skiing longer distances, ranging from 1.5 (sprint) to 20 km, and also includes two relay events (4 x 2.5 km). Para ice hockey works in the same way as “regular” ice hockey, but has the athletes sitting in designated sleds and using specially designed hockey sticks with metal “teeth” to move around on the ice. Snowboarding consists of two events: banked slalom and snowboard cross. While athletes with different kinds of disabilities compete against each other in the standing category of the skiing events, snowboarding uses three more detailed categorisations, including significant impairment in one leg or “significant combined impairment in both legs” (SB-LL1), impairment in one or both legs but with “less activity impairment” (SB-LL2), and upper limb impairments affecting balance (SB-UL). Due to the insufficient number of athletes, only events for the second category was included for women. Finally, wheelchair curling is played in a largely similar way to “regular” curling, but all teams must be mixed gender, and there is no sweeping involved.
If you have watched the Summer Paralympic Games, you will know that there are many more events in each discipline than what is the case in the Summer Olympic Games, in order to accommodate the varying disabilities that the athletes have. While it is the case that there are more events in each sport in the Winter Paralympic Games compared to the Winter Olympic Games as well, the categories are much less narrow than in the Summer Games, due to the lower number of athletes competing. This means that the potential impact that the athletes' differing impairments can have on their possibilities to compete on par with each other is much larger. In order to account for this, a system known as factored time is used for the timed events. All Paralympic athletes are classified according to a system that takes into account their level of disability, which must fit into one of the ten eligible impairments for the Paralympics, including impaired muscle power, ataxia (uncoordinated movement due to damage of the central nervous system), and blindness. Within the factored time system, each athlete is then awarded a percentage, ranging from 100 to 80%, which denotes at which speed the clock runs when the athlete in question is competing. A factor of 100% means that the clock runs in real time, while a factor of for example 86.71% means that a lower percentage of real time is actually counted, resulting in the clock running at a slower pace. The time factoring is done in real time, while the races are ongoing, meaning that no calculations are being performed afterwards. The classification and factored time systems are not uncontroversial, and have continuously received criticism for being unfair. Nevertheless, they are still in use, and are unlikely to change any time soon.
A total of 46 countries were represented in this year's Winter Paralympics, with Azerbaijan, Israel, and Puerto Rico all making their debuts at the Games. Host nation China, the United States, and Canada had the highest numbers of competing athletes (96, 65, and 45 respectively), while just over a third of the participating NPCs were represented by only one or two athletes each. At 66 years of age, the oldest athlete competing was wheelchair curler Pam Wilson from the United States, while the youngest was 15-year-old vision impaired alpine skier Elina Stary from Austria. A record number of 138 female athletes competed during the Games, which is in line with the current trend of growing participation among women. Not counting the “extra” medals called for in team events, a total of 234 medals were awarded to the top three contenders of every event. The design of the medals is the same as the one used for the Olympic Games, based on the principle that the two Winter Games are “equally wonderful”. They thus have the same concentric circle-design inspired by ancient Chinese jade pendants, and feature the Paralympic logo on the front and the official emblem of this year on the back. The words gold, silver, and bronze are also engraved on the respective medals using Braille letters. The official emblem of the Paralympic Games this year is called Flying High, and is inspired by the Chinese character for fly (飞), stylised as a ribbon, just like in the Olympic Games. The design is further meant to symbolise “an athlete in a wheelchair rushing towards the finish line and victory”. The official mascot for the Games is called Shuey Rhon Rhon, which design is inspired by Chinese lanterns. It is meant to symbolise the “inspiring warmth, friendship, courage, and perseverance” of Paralympic athletes. Lanterns are further associated with harvest, celebration, prosperity, and brightness, while the red colour was chosen for its auspiciousness. The mascot's name, where the first character means snow, the second to include or tolerate, and the third to fuse or melt, also fits into a wider vision of the Games, which hopes for “more inclusion for people with impairments [and] more dialogue and understanding between cultures of the world”.
The athletes who competed in this year's Winter Paralympics all embodied the spirit of the Games, giving their all and doing their best in pursuit of the coveted Paralympic gold medals. For some athletes, their hard work really paid off. Through a number of outstanding performances, alpine skier Jesper Pedersen from Norway, competing in the sitting category, earned himself four gold medals, while Ukrainian-born biathlete and cross-country skier Oksana Masters from the United States, also competing in the sitting category, earned no less than seven medals – three golds and four silvers. In the vision impaired categories of alpine skiing, the Aigner siblings from Austria – Veronika (who moreover skis with the third Aigner sister Elisabeth as her guide), Barbara, and Johannes – all earned several podium spots each, making them a truly golden family. For the forth consecutive time, the United States were able to call themselves champions at the end of the para ice hockey tournament, while China became the wheelchair curling champions for the second time in a row. The overall medal table was topped by China for the first time, which athletes scooped up an impressive total of 61 medals, out of which 18 were gold, followed by Ukraine (total: 29, gold: 11) and Canada (total: 25, gold: 8). In spite of everything happening in their home country, Ukraine's twenty athletes were in no way short of making awe-inspiring performances. They made three podium sweeps, all of them in biathlon events (men's 6 km vision impaired, women's 10 km standing, and men's 10 km vision impaired), and exhibited incredible skill in all the other events they participated in. However, Ukraine's success in the Paralympic Winter Games, and the sense of achievement among the country's athletes, has sadly been overshadowed by the war. Their futures are now looking increasingly uncertain, as many might no longer even have a home to return to.
It is difficult not to be troubled by the plight of the Ukrainian people, who up until a few weeks ago were going about their daily activities as usual, but have now seen their lives be completely shattered by Russian violence. Ukrainian athletes made sure to make use of the attention the Paralympics awarded them to demonstrate and call upon the world to take action to help their home country, while many athletes from other countries also opted to show their support for Ukraine during the Games. With the current situation in mind, the motto of the Beijing 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Games, “Together for a Shared Future”, which previously might have been considered difficult to achieve, now unfortunately just seems even more like a utopian dream. Nevertheless, we can only hope that the Russian invasion will somehow come to an end, and that future sporting events will be able to act as a uniting force on the long and uncertain road towards world peace.
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