A comment from a reader got me to thinking… most of us really don’t know about Paralympic skiing. I didn’t until I started reading about it. Since Thursday is Sports Day on this blog, I thought I’d write about adaptive skiing. How is it different than regular skiing?

Since there are several different kinds of disability, the Paralympic games allow people with different kinds of disabilities to compete. Currently, the Paralympic games have skiing races for visually impaired racers, sitting racers, and standing racers.

Visually impaired racers, of course have trouble seeing. You might have heard about Canada’s Brian McKeever, who was supposed to ski for Canada in the regular Vancouver Olympics. Turns out that some of Canada’s other skiers did so well in the earlier events that he was excluded from the final race selection. Had he competed in the Vancouver Olympics, he would have had to ski alone. In the Paralympics, he will be able to ski with a sighted guide. So will all the other racers.

Standing racers often use regular skis, although their poles are sometimes a little bit different than regular ski poles. Some of these skiers have lost a leg in a war zone, others are disabled in other ways, but can skill ski while standing. Downhill skiers can use prosthetic arms and legs.

Racers that can’t stand use what is called a sit-ski. This is a kind of chair attached to skis. These racers are often paraplegic for one reason or another.

Hopefully that explains some of the terms that I’ve been using, or that you might hear if you decide to watch some of the Paralympic broadcasts over the next couple of weeks. :-)