The phenomenon of the Paralympic contenders

One can learn about courage, willpower, and patriotism from the Paralympic competitors. Despite their disabilities, they do their best to be useful for society, so that their relatives and friends would be proud of them, so that their lives are not in vain. At first they become champions on the level of their family, then region, then country, and eventually — the entire world. The main thing is to have a wish and strength in oneself, and then no physical problems will be an obstacle on the way to success in a sports career — often outdoing healthy sportsmen. The last winter Olympiad, held this year in Vancouver, proved this. At first the Olympic team of Ukraine went to compete for medals to Canada. The team consisted of 47 sportsmen. No medals were won, and the fifth place was the best result. Later the Paralympics team competed. Their team was smaller than the Olympic team — only 26 sportsmen, but it won as many as 19 awards and the third place in the overall teams’ ranking.

“Our sportsmen participated in the tournament for 32 sets of awards. For the first time in the history of Ukraine’s participation in winter Paralympic they competed in three kinds of sport out of five represented by the Paralympics-2010: cross-country skiing, biathlon, and alpine skiing (for the first time!),” the press secretary of the National Committee for Sport of Handicapped of Ukraine Natalia Harach told The Day. “In the ranking by overall number of medals our national team shared the honorable third place with the team of Canada (Russia took the first place and Germany took the second). In biathlon our team is the second in the world. On the whole the Paralympics competitors got five gold, eight silver, and six bronze medals.”

How can one explain the striking difference in the result of the Olympic and Paralympic teams? The sports bases for their training are actually the same: outdated and worn. The trainings are held with the same intensity and insistence. There is some difference in the state financing: the Paralympic sportsmen get much less than Olympic sportsmen from the state budget. Why do then disabled athletes stand on the victory dais more often than others do? What stimulates and inspires them? Perhaps it is impossible to explain it in words. For how can one explain how they push themselves to the limit for themselves, first of all, and for the sport image of the country, try to be useful not for certain people but for the state in general, and demand almost nothing in return.