Disabilities in Paralympic swimming could impact a swimmer’s ability to execute an effective swim-start. We examined how swim-start performance differed between severity and type of physical disability. Swim-starts were measured in 55 elite Paralympic swimmers from eight different Paralympic classes; S14, S13, S10-S6, S3 grouped as no- (classes S13 & S14), low- (S9 & S10), mid- (S7 & S8) or high- (≤ S6) severity of physical disability and also by type of physical disability (upper, lower, and palsy) to provide meaningful comparisons. The swimmer’s competitive level was determined by the international point score (IPS). Swimmers with no physical disability were significantly faster in most swim-start phases compared with those with physical disabilities, as were swimmers with low-severity disabilities compared with the mid- and high-severity groups. Block velocity was highly negatively correlated (r = –0.57 to –0.86) with 15-m swimming time for all groups except high-severity disabilities. Free-swim velocity is a priority area for improving swim-starts for swimmers regardless of disability, given large correlations between this measure and IPS. Swimmers with lower body or high-severity disabilities spent a smaller percentage of time overall in the underwater phase. Assessment of four specific phases of the swim-start highlight distinctive priorities for coaches working with Paralympic swimmers in an applied biomechanical manner.
Search Results
Phases of the Swim-start in Paralympic Swimmers Are Influenced by Severity and Type of Disability
Andrew A. Dingley, David B. Pyne, and Brendan Burkett
Expert Views on Evidence-Based Classification for Goalball: A Delphi Study
Anna M. Martin, Donghyun Ryu, Robin C. Jackson, and David L. Mann
Paralympic Committee [IPC], 2015 ). If deemed eligible, athletes are then grouped into classes according to the extent that their impairment impacts sporting performance ( IPC, 2015 ). This increases the chance that athletes compete against others whose impairments have a similar impact on performance
Incidence of Shoulder Injury in Elite Wheelchair Athletes Differ Between Sports: A Critically Appraised Topic
Jessica R. Fairbairn and Kellie C. Huxel Bliven
Clinical Scenario The inaugural Paralympic games were held in 1960, yet it was not until 1976 when injuries during the games were first documented. 1 There are limited epidemiological data on disabled athletes due to inconsistent documentation, lack of definitions of injuries, reliance on self
Factors Associated With Penalty Outcome on Male Elite Goalball
Otávio Luis Piva da Cunha Furtado, Mikko Häyrinen, Isabela dos Santos Alves, Leonardo Travitzki, and Márcio Pereira Morato
In the last decade, there has been a constant increase in the number of published studies involving goalball, a Paralympic sport exclusively created for people with visual impairments ( Alves et al., 2020 ; Bowerman et al., 2011 ; Furtado et al., 2016 ; Gulick & Malone, 2011 ). This team sport
Total Testosterone and Cortisol During Wheelchair Rugby Training in Athletes With Cervical Spinal Cord Injury
Eduardo Stieler, Varley Teoldo da Costa, Aline Ângela Silva Cruz, João Paulo Pereira Rosa, Ingrid LudImilla Bastos Lôbo, Julia Romão, Andrea Maculano Esteves, Marco Tulio de Mello, and Andressa Silva
Paralympics are increasingly organized, and professionals with remarkable evolution in terms of organization, number of countries, and athletes is one of the largest sporting events in the world in high-performance sports, 1 which requires training to be systematic, and scientifically based. Among
Inverse Dynamics Modeling of Paralympic Wheelchair Curling
Brock Laschowski, Naser Mehrabi, and John McPhee
Wheelchair curling debuted at the 2006 Paralympic Games. Competing athletes utilize the same stones and ice sheets as Olympic curlers, although sweeping (ie, using a broom to control the stone’s trajectory) is omitted and the stone must be pushed from a stationary wheelchair using a delivery stick
Maximal Fully Tethered Swim Performance in Para Swimmers With Physical Impairment
Luke Hogarth, Brendan Burkett, Peter Van de Vliet, and Carl Payton
In Para swimming, a functional classification system has been used to structure competition since the 1992 Barcelona Paralympics. 1 Swimmers with physical, visual, and intellectual impairments compete in separate classes based on the estimated impact of their impairment on swim performance
Predicting Happiness in Paralympic Swimming Medalists
Jeffrey Martin, Mario Vassallo, Jacklyn Carrico, and Ellen Armstrong
, 2017 ). In particular, elite sport competitions such as the Paralympics and Olympics are considered ideal settings to observe intense emotional expressions associated with both success (e.g., joy) and failure (e.g., anguish) because winning at the Paralympics and Olympics is considered the pinnacle of
Investigating the Nexus of Paralympic Bodies With Medicine
Nancy Quinn and Laura Misener
Paralympic community ( Howe, 2008a , 2018 ; Lins et al., 2019 ; McMaster et al., 2012 ; Peers, 2009 , 2012 ; Townsend & Cushion, 2017 ). However, more is required to credibly interrogate and broaden understandings of sporting experience of those with membership in the para sport community. With the
Individualising Coaching in Olympic and Paralympic Worlds: An Applied Perspective
Scott Simon and Pam Richards
The operationalisation of a high-performance vision in the context of professional elite sport, in which shared mental models (SMMs) are developed within Paralympic sport, refutes the claim that Paralympic sport is a microcosm of Olympic performance. Instead, the Paralympic landscape should be
