The 2024 Summer Paralympics have officially kicked off in the early hours of this morning.
More than 4,000 athletes from around the world are set to compete over the next two weeks, with the first Aussies up for table tennis at 6pm Australian Eastern Standard Time.
So how different is their experience from that of able-bodied athletes?
On today’s episode of The Briefing, Australian Paralympic champion Carol Cooke, who has competed in London, Rio, and Tokyo, joins Bension Siebert to reflect on what it’s like to compete at the most elite level in Paralympic sport, and how it compares to the experience of able-bodied Olympians.
Cooke was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) in the late 1990s, and that was when she first embraced para-sports.
She competed in rowing before switching to para-cycling, where she has since become a three-time Paralympic gold medallist and nine-time world champion.
“I would never change the fact that I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) because it’s given me opportunities I never ever would have had, and it’s actually made me who I am,” Cooke said.
Cooke explained that the Olympics and Paralympics are kept apart due to the different classifications and logistical challenges of accommodating so many athletes.
“People are now looking at para-athletes as on par with Olympic athletes and realising that they train just as hard, sometimes harder, because of things they’ve got to get past,” she said.
“Tokyo showed that we weren’t just taking part, we were competing. And the way they did it really changed the way I think people looked at the Paralympics.”
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