Overcoming Obstacles

Did you see the Chinese swimmer who won four gold medals at the Tokyo Paralympic Games — despite having no arms?

I was astounded.

I watched bits and pieces of the Tokyo Olympics in late July and early August, and it was OK, even though organizers ended up not allowing any spectators due to COVID concerns.

And I wasn’t planning to watch any of the Paralympic competition because, well, I just thought it would be a letdown after the world’s best athletes packed up and went home.

But it’s something I’m glad I didn’t miss, and it was the Chinese swimmer without arms who aroused my curiosity about the Paralympic Games.

Zheng Tao — who lost his arms as a child to an electric shock — simply amazed me.

"Daughter, look at me,” he said in a viral video after another winning race. “I can swim so fast even though I don't have arms!"

Zheng dominated events in freestyle, backstroke and butterfly. All of his victories have been world or Paralympic records.

After winning his last race, Zheng told reporters: 'I went all out with no regrets as this is my last race at Tokyo 2020. I think this was one of my best races ever.”

Zheng took up the sport at the age of 13, and made his international swimming debut six years later at the World Championships in the Netherlands.

He then went on to win his first Paralympic gold at London 2012 in the 100m backstroke event.

I can’t imagine how you backstroke without arms!

To date, he has won nine Paralympic medals.

Wow.

Participation at this year's 2020 Tokyo Paralympics has been at an all-time high. More than 4,500 athletes from 163 countries competed, marking the largest number of athletes ever to take part in the games.

The first paralympic-style competition was played in 1948. Ludwig Guttmann, a doctor who ran a spinal injury center in Great Britain, spearheaded the movement.

“I found that sport for the disabled has a tremendous effect on the social point of view,” Guttmann said in an interview. “When I saw how sport is accepted by the paralyzed, it was logical to start a sports movement.”

In 1948, Guttmann organized the first contest for impaired athletes, which he named the International Wheelchair Games.

The games soon became an annual event, each year expanding to more athletes and becoming the Paralympic Games in 1960.

Growth of the Paralympics was swift. At the 1976 games in Toronto, more than 1,500 athletes from 40 countries participated in 13 sports. The increased exposure to the event led to more inclusivity.

Guttman’s games were originally designed for veterans with spinal injuries. But by 1976, non-veteran athletes with disabilities beyond spinal cord injuries — including amputees and those with vision impairments — were invited to compete.

That raised the question of how to make contests fair so the least-disabled person wouldn’t always win. Paralympics organizers started to classify competitors by the extent and type of their disabilities.

The classifications fall into three broad categories — physical, visual, and intellectual — and determine whether athletes are eligible to compete in a sport and how competitors are grouped together for events.

That sounds like a tough job: Trying to group competitors with differing physical challenges and still make it a fair contest.

And the competitions have been so different from what we’re used to seeing: Volleyball players sitting on the court on either side of a three-foot-high net; table tennis players playing with no arms and the paddle in their mouths; blind runners competing with sighted guides running alongside them; people playing basketball in wheelchairs.

Truly amazing.

And how are they different from the elite Olympian competitors?

They’re not.

Both have the same drive, the same determination and the same dreams.

A toast to all of them!