A Day Volunteering at Para Nordic World Cup

[TeriM]

So hubby and I are currently in Whistler volunteering as race officials for the IPC World Cup. This is a race for para atheletes which is the lead up race for next years Paralympics (held a few weeks after the regular Olympics here). Today's competition (we are here four days) was a biathalon with skiing distances of 12.5 km. The atheletes are absolutely amazing!

There are three classes of skiers. They are sit-skiers, standing and blind.

These are sit skiers. There are varying degrees within all of the classes which are time adjusted to even the field within the disability level. An example would be a sit skier with full core function would have an advantage over one with just chest/shoulder function so they discount that chest/shoulder skier by a set percentage. I didn't bring out my camera until later so missed them racing and shooting but here are some shots of skiers on warm-down laps.





These are atheletes in line for the start of the standing category. The standing category covers a large range of persons from amputees with or without prosthetics, brain injuries which impair body function, etc and the "disabilities" cover many different parts of the body.