Wheelchair racing finals kicked off Friday at the Rio Paralympics with the women\u2019s T54-class\u00a0100-meter sprint, in which\u00a0China\u2019s Liu Wenjun narrowly inched out American standout (and world record holder) Tatyana McFadden for the gold. It was the first of seven wheelchair racing finals at Olympic Stadium\u00a0this weekend, and you\u00a0should watch them all, because wheelchair racing\u2014in which\u00a0athletes with amputated legs, spinal cord injuries, or\u00a0cerebral palsy use their arms to pedal\u00a0three-wheeled handcycles\u2014is awesome.<\/p>\n
Usain Bolt\u2019s average foot speed in the\u00a0100-meter dash, man\u2019s fastest race,\u00a0clocks in around 23 mph. Handcycles take more time to reach top speed, but\u00a0longer\u00a0distance races run faster, turning\u00a0slogging\u00a0battles\u00a0into high-performance long sprints. The men\u2019s wheelchair racing\u00a01,500-meter world record,\u00a0averaging 19 mph,\u00a0is thirty minutes faster than that of the traditional track event.\u00a0Joggers deteriorate, but wheelchair racers accelerate.<\/p>\n
If tightly packed huddles of world class runners jockeying for inches of position sounds stressful, try cutting corners through a\u00a0morass of five-foot-long tricycles.\u00a0Passing\u00a0demands precise control over front-wheel positioning amidst clotted\u00a0machinery and pumping arms. Angled tires bounce off each other in the scrum. It\u2019s more Mad Max<\/em> than Chariots of Fire<\/em>.<\/p>\n Like all Paralympic events, wheelchair racing includes several levels of competition for different levels of impairment. T51 athletes have minimal upper body function, T52 and\u00a0T53 athletes have slightly more power\u00a0in their\u00a0arms\u00a0and legs, and\u00a0T54 athletes\u2014like McFadden and dominant Brit\u00a0David\u00a0Weir\u2014are\u00a0paraplegics with normal hand and arm function. The sport modifies its\u00a0rules and bike\u00a0types for each classificiation, equalizing the playing field for different ranges of disability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wheelchair racing finals kicked off Friday at the Rio Paralympics with the women\u2019s T54-class\u00a0100-meter sprint, in which\u00a0China\u2019s Liu Wenjun narrowly inched out American standout (and world record holder) Tatyana McFadden for the gold. It was the first of seven wheelchair racing finals at Olympic Stadium\u00a0this weekend, and you\u00a0should watch them all, because wheelchair racing\u2014in which\u00a0athletes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}It\u2019s inclusive<\/strong><\/h3>\n