Paralympic Athletes

Helooo, I want to tell my experience in September 1, 2022.

In English class, my friend and I learned about paralympic athletes. Para-athletics is the sport of athletics practised by people with a disability as a parasport. Their stories make us motivated and always grateful for what we have.

I was grouped into group with Stevanie and Rafi. The paralympic athlete that chosen by us is Chantal Petitclerc

Chantal Petitclerc is a Canadian wheelchair racer and a senator from Quebec. Limitations or physical impairments she has is she loss of use in both legs or paralysis of the legs, because ini 1983, when she 13 years old was at a friends farm in attempt to build a bike ramp, Petitclerc and her friends took a barn door off it's hinged. They tried to connect the door to a crate, but in the process, the door fell on Petit, breaking her spine and leaving her a paraplegic. 

before she become to be a famous Paralympic athlete she has a obstacles. she must to training for approved her skills, she trained at François Charron Centre, a rehabilitation institute in Québec for people with physical disabilities. After three months of training, Petitclerc was almost ready to compete in her first wheelchair club competition. However, she needed a racing chair, which she couldn’t afford (a new racing chair at the time cost $4,000). With $400 from her father, she had a chair made of components from three different second-hand chairs. Although Petitclerc had no use of her legs, she could move her hips, and had full use of her abdominal muscles as well as good balance. Due to the fact that Petitclerc had good upper-body mobility, she was classified as a T53/T54 wheelchair racer, an International Paralympic Committee category assigned to athletes with the fewest upper body activity limitations. Petitclerc was the only woman in her training group at Université Laval, but over time became one of its strongest members. In her first official race, she did not win, but was recognized as having the “best potential.” By 1988, she was on the Canadian national team.

Achievement Chantal gotten so far is she won two bronze medals — in the women’s 200m and the women’s 800m in barcelona 1992. She had won the gold medal in the women’s 100m and 200m at the 1994 International Paralympic Committee World Championship in Berlin, at the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney, Petitclerc won the gold medal in the 200m and 800m. She also won silver medals in the 100m and 400m. At the 2002 Commonwealth Games, Chantal Petitclerc won the gold medal in the women’s 800m. Chantal Petitclerc won the gold medal in a women’s 800m exhibition event at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Chantal Petitclerc won the gold medal in a women’s 800m exhibition event at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.