2024 Paralympic Games - Classifications System & What To Expect In Paris

Paris 2024 Paralympic Games welcome to the running Channel podcast with me Sarah heartley Andy badley and Rick Kelce and today on the podcast we're taking a deep dive into the Paris 2024 par Olympic Games we're going to be covering the latest news plus unpacking the various athlete classifications yeah we've already been spoiled by the Olympic Games this summer and today we're going to be learning about which sports are in the Paralympics but not in the Olympics right let's get into it and as always we'll also be answering your questions okay so catch up first how have you been yeah um I ran some straa art yesterday I'm extremely sore then I played tennis I've got to say when this this video is basically draw your face it's coming out very soon and you will not be able to know who has drawn which picture I had to draw my own face I went up to a field in North London yes we have them excellent the hilly though hilly field field did you stop stop and look at it for a little bit before you carried on running my was it was it a pink field uh it was a beautiful field in North London my tactic was I thought if I stop my watch it will mean that I can go and draw an eye and put the iris in the middle of the eye but actually when I looked at the map it stillw still drew the line what what's going on with that it because it has to be one continuous it has to be one continuous Trace but but how does it know which way I walked if I've stopped it cuz it just draws point point to point so just draw a straight linew straight line between the two points where you stopped and that's why have you ever seen it where someone's like finished a run and then clearly has cycled home and then there and then has been like oh forgot to pause my watch started it stopped it and then you just get this like massive line like Through Rivers across London hang on well so you can't draw an island with stra Arts it's impossible yes what do you mean this is so well you can't draw an IR yeah I was trying to the iris and the pupil you really got into this did you was it it was your skin really smooth on your drawing or did you were you wearing a face H I had so much fun did you draw the little pot of Cav face cream think very good honestly I was dreading this you know War had to play tennis afterwards dreading just hate running I thought I SP I spent a kilometer on every feature on my face what does that say about what you think about all I can say some of the comments I cannot wait for this to come out but some of the comments is basically I had three different people writing on straa now now i' figured out how to read the comments yeah um and who said variations of this line is this Andy when he had hair oh we also had a great comment last week I hate you someone so we have at work we have this channel called lovely feedback and it's where if someone spots something really nice that one of you have said they pop it in there and my favorite one got posted this week where someone had commented on the podcast saying wow Sarah your hair looks so nice I was starting to wonder whether that's a thing amongst Runners and then I remembered Andy that was in the nice comments b i I said to the person that had put it in in the running Channel team I was like what why is this in the lovely feedback it's lovely feedback for me yeah well that's true and I was just thinking you said you had to do one kilometer for every feature of your face correct thankfully we're doing this post Botox otherwise you'd have been out there for for all day just just smooth lines yeah yeah didn't have to double up on anything um Sarah's hinted that she has something to admit to us today because Embarrassment at the Run Club didn't you go to your first ever London run club last night yeah I did I as in non running Channel run Club yeah yeah yeah so for ages I've been like I should really go down to one there are so many run clubs in London and they they all look amazing I went to my first one yeah royally embarrassed myself how so we met we did the introductions I was there with a few mates we start running and it's with I feel like Autumn is coming it was quite dark we started at half seven so the street lights were on we set off and and it was described as groovy Pace I saw your route and your pace groovy Pace yeah so that's how they describe the pace and it kind of it works out as an average of 540 okay but when they said 540 I was like great okay we're going 5:40 which for me is quite comfortable but then we set off at like 5:15 and I was like oh okay off we go uh stacked it on a curb oh oh no yeah and not only like if you can think of all of the different ways that you could fall over amongst a brand new set of people and like recover it and be all right you couldn't St this one out a bit of a trip recover it fine like oh funny no this was a i stacked it I almost recovered myself then I caught my foot on another bit of the pavement and then went down on one knee and then fully like hands on the floor face into the Cur everyone had to stop behind me cuz I was relatively you hear the muts going is that sah from the running was literally like and also the worst bit we were 600 meters into a 10k run oh no okay well I want you to rank in order these three embarrassing moments for yourself right okay that one that the Run Club yeah when you met Philly Balden for the first time what what happened so Philly B has been a standing guest for me on this podcast um she's a fantastic athlete in her own right um but the first time that Sarah met her she properly fan girl and was like than Harry Jud oh so that was going to be number three was hour blesser I just went in and started asking her all of these questions and we were in we were in like the athlete slvp bit of like a section and she was like sorry who are you cuz you ever introduced yourself know which perfectly fine question cuz I was like no I literally haven't said was this after or before she stood in for Andy it was it was before thank you very much Harry I honestly think that they're falling over most embarrassing thing but you know what anyone listening to this who's scared to go to a run Club I've done it I've done the embarrassing thing everyone was lovely about it I just go to run club with you and know that you will absorb that humiliation for them I know and now I'm doing this half marathon race at this weekend and I'm literally like can you see the bruise on my hand oh gosh I know yeah and it's all down my leg as well I'm sorry to hear that s so embarrassing and are you okay you've been camping I have been camping I've been at a festival and I want to say a big shout out to all the lovely podcast listeners who found me at big fetival no way yeah and came up to me and I had few chats to What's um lots of different things I wish I'd got the lady's name because I think after she said this to me she was a little bit mortified but the the we were I was with the kids we were quite far forward watching um a band it might have been Circa waves can't remember yeah uh on the main stage and we were quite close to the front and after a few minutes the lady turned around and and was like asked oh it's Andy isn't it or something to that effect and she oh I love the podcast which is a really lovely thing to say my kids then start laughing cuz they think it's hilarious that people might meet me and this it's a random place but then I Dancing and Being Recognised as Andy Badley think the this lovely lady then saw her friends looking her a bit weird and then was like oh yeah probably this is weird and then just turned around and kept dancing again so thank you it made my day I love how people approach Andy because you know it's not double tap on the shoulder um are you Andy badley the double great British Olympic runner no it's are you Andy the guy who gets the piss taken out of by Rick and Sarah yeah 100% every single time it happens one person from the team will be like do you think you're more famous now than when you're a double Olympian the the I think is well more people want to talk to me now maybe I think I'm I'm more likable now when maybe I wasn't very likable I tell you else is likable Rose Harvey she came in last week while you were away and um if you have not listened to the show it came out a couple of days ago um she was lovely wasn't she Sarah you know what blew my mind a little bit kind of behind the scenes stuff how relaxed she is she was getting basically getting married the week after we did the recording so now essentially and Shen got the ring rings and we said to her well what are you doing next she goes I might just go and get a wedding ring yeah she was she was very calm great person to having a crisis a broken leg and had that incredible experience so calm at the Olympic so yeah I just to finish off I suppose my catch up like I'm really struggling with my running at the moment I found it very difficult in Paris when it was so hot had a little niggle while I was out there then came back and then had that classic like I almost felt like I felt after running the Olympics had that kind of real down and then because we've been so on for like that whole period I just picked up like some kind of illness then camping has not helped me recover so yeah I'm battling a little bit what do you mean lying on the floor is a great way to fret for a so it's there's not long I think next week's episode we're going to delve into half marathons because all of us are training for the same distance at the moment yeah Rick slightly reluctantly Andy also slightly reluctantly but you've got I'm running my half marathon this weekend as this comes out everyone wish me luck it's going to go and then mine's supposed to be the following weekend although after running uh I did a video with Jess from the running channel the other day and that has really knocked my confidence and left me feeling a bit sore so funny it was supposed to it was supposed to boost her confidence and you were just supposed to ride it out I think I gave her all of my confidence she absorbed it all she's great yeah I'm empty I think you'll smash it I just think I think you need to go out and do one of those like confident boost sessions I do I need to I just need to get my mojo and my energy back I'm just feeling wiped out after like a tough summer because we were we spent so long building up to the Olympics but speaking of the Olympics now Paris is hosting something uh of an equal we hope scale the par Olympic Games Paris 2024 yeah it's so cool to watch it felt like Paris like recovered Paris went into hibernation for a few weeks to kind of recover after the Olympics and now bam it's come back to life opening ceremony par Olympic Games looks amazing yeah and I I was listening to what all the athletes are saying we obviously watching parts of the opening ceremony and and Johnny peacock who sped to par Olympic gold in 2012 uh when I think he was only 18 or 19 um he he ran London Rio Tokyo and this this his fourth games yeah U but he was saying it was very strange Tokyo there's no crowds Rio there were some some funding issues and so on I think around the Paralympics so he feels like this is the first kind of proper Paralympics and he's hoping The First Proper Paralympics in Paris that uh for since London 2012 that's interesting and that that he's been around the city in Paris seing like paralympians on billboards the noise the opening ceremony he says that this feels like the same scale as London which at that point I think everyone said was kind of a new bar that had been set for the par Olympic Games the global exposure the interest that the public took the fact that there were sold out Stadium that of really exting so it's the first time that France has hosted a summer Paralympics 4,400 athletes 168 countries set to take part in 22 par Olympic sports and there's 549 gold medals in Paris and you know what I thought was nice about the consistency from the Olympics to the par Olympic Games oh sh oh no not that's actually pretty good well the good news is we won't get done for copyright that sounds nothing like to do my um Google game to see what kind of percentage match Rich would get Rick would get on the um on Google's song match I don't think it would be very high probably not high we'll test that later seriously though some of the um the details around par Olympics I think you kind of watch it but no not often do people kind of explain how it all works um not just compared to Olympics but as a games and how it all gets put together like things like the wheelchair basketball it's 3.05 meters from the ground which is exactly the same as the Olympic games um and yeah I assume because of from an accessibility perspective and as as a sports evolved like the courts have been the same around the world you can just turn up at any regular basketball court and then you play the same but terms of if you stand underneath the basketball hoop it's high over three m is high so imagine doing that sitting down like it's that's actually quite it's not hard I'm a bit weak I don't know if I could throw the ball that high from sitting down yeah the arm strength is incredible um two par Olympic disciplines that do not have an Olympic counterpart they're called gold ball and Bosa is it Bosa or B B B botcher which we had a little look at before uh we started recording yeah it's actually happening right now some of the matches so can I explain that Andy BOS well it's a little bit like uh so it's it's played seated from from wheelchairs my understanding is it's played by athletes in the cerebal py classification um and also it's like a cross between kind of crown green bows and pank or or botch that you might have seen played particularly on the continent where you're throwing balls to get as close to a white marker as possible another white ball um so yeah that's that's really interesting and do you guys kind of when you've watched the par Olympics before and you've kind of heard about the classifications and how people are put into different groups in the par Olympics it's quite easy for it to go over your head isn't it yeah yeah what I didn't realize as well is that there's there's a kind of classification process so before these athletes have even arrived at the games they've had to kind of go through a series of tests or kind of different protocols um and different Assessments in order to make sure that they're in the right category and that they're eligible for the right category as well well so that's what we wanted to go through because if you are excited to put the TV back on and watch the Athletics I always want to know the different kind of classifications because there are kind of multiple different I guess like world records at Classifications in Sports with Disabilities stake for 100 met 200 and like what all of those different classifications are so we're going to go into it yeah I don't I don't think there's a there's a St from my understanding there's not actually a single classification system that applies across kind of all sports because every discipline is slightly different so Athletics will have its own for the track and field ah but that's what CU I've heard for years it's like you're in the T something category you know what that stands for it's track I don't how I have watched this for so long and did not make that connection and the F field yeah um so should we go through them so you got your mind's your mind's seem blown by the alphabet Oh that's true yeah but did you ever I was just like right T I just thought it you just you just accept it and I think it's one of the things where I'd always known it but I'd forgotten so so 11 to13 is for vision impairment if you ever hear that on on on the TV if watch that would be show up as like T 1130 F 1130 uh 20 is intellectual impairment and then there are coordination impairments of 31 to 38 and then there's also uh numbers con uh connected to prosthesis or equivalent and they are 40 to 47 m and then you got the wheelchair races and the seated throws and they're F yeah they kind of share the 50s so 51 to 54 for T is is wheelchair and 51 to 58 for f is is the seated throws and then 61 to 64 is lower limb competing with prosthesis and if you need to hear that again just rewind a minute you might want to watch that over again but I think it's interesting of the different classifications so that you can see the different races what I loved around 2012 was this is when there's a there's a TV show in the UK on Channel 4 called the last leg and they essentially covered the Paralympics but in this alternative way this incredibly accessible alternative and funny way and the big thing for me that I found about it because I think we as we're going through the classifications there you're quite worried I'm quite worried that like you might say the wrong thing or or not quite understand it and I think that the biggest thing that the last legs done for paralympic sport for example is they had always had a segment called is it okay and it was like quite you know quite close to the mark a lot of it but it's like is it okay to say this or to ask this question or whatever it might be and through doing that in the last 10 or 12 years it is okay yeah and and they've had you know it's hosted by a host with a prosthetic foot um it it's it's an incredibly inclusive um show and I think that doing things like that like asking is it okay and like laughing at stuff that maybe people might worry are you allowed to laugh at that stuff yeah that's that's done so if you imagine combining that with the power of a sold out Stadium of 80 or 90,000 people and all of the TV coverage and stuff um I know we've got a question to to talk about later where the power that that has on parents and families at home who are watching and who then their children or or you know teenagers aspire to then compete in the par Olympics I I I think there kind of there's one kind of if you're watching it you know just to add on to what and he was saying there there's one kind of sentence which kind of helped me understand this a little bit better uh when it comes to those class ific how you talk about it so the number when you hear a number on the TV or the radio also represents the level of impairment the lower the number with each impairment type the more severe it is okay which I think that probably helps yeah and there's always been I I always remember a lot of chat about there was always a big focus on the The Advantage of Lower Limb Prostheses blades so the the lower limb prosthesis that people might wear if they have um you know had a leg amputated or been been born with with a lower limb uh disability so then they need a blade to to compete and whether there was always a chat about whether that had an advantage like conferred an advantage versus not having that disability in the first place which seems crazy but obviously the these blades a little bit like Super Shoes give you this kind of extra energy return um and actually a lot of the you know I don't know for sure but a lot of the jumpers will use their if they have a single leg prosthesis they'll use their blade to take as their takeoff foot oh really that's my understanding oh really we were chatting yesterday cuz there is one brand that I've been to their headquarters and I've seen blades but you could wear them whether you needed a prosthesis or you didn't and that it's interesting to think of like that technology you're not going to see in in the Olympics because that that definitely if you're only allowed a 40 mil stack heite that's probably going to be even faster but it's interesting to look at like the we were at the 100 meter records yesterday and I think it's like 10.54 is the 100 meter record versus can't remember the 9.58 yeah so like really close yeah yeah I think that's incredible and I just and I love the the element of Technology there as well like obviously you want fairness but at the same time the benefits and development of technology in the last that have come it's come from all different areas Formula One for materials and all that sort of stuff um that's then filtered down to to allow these athletes to like you say running 10.5 yeah for someone with one or you know one or two leg prosthesis is is an absolutely amazing thing not too surprising none of us can get near that no no no no well but what was it but 20% of the UK think that they could be in the next in the next one podcast that you should definitely go and listen back to if you haven't already is the TRC meets episode that we did with ant Brian because he talked a little bit about um the par Olympics he volunteered at the London par Olympics in 2012 and he just said like you said earlier the atmosphere there was incredible and he was talking to another volunteer and he was like well I've volunteered at both and this seems even louder than before and they were like well yeah because the the kind of adversity that you have to face just to get into the stadium start line yeah yeah is incredible and like you just feel the atmosphere and there's an amazing reward for these athletes as well so lovely little story is that each medal contains a piece of original iron from the Eiffel Tower which I think is pretty cool but the medals also have distinct Engravings and Universal Braille on them so to allow the para athletes to distinguish the medals by touch so it was a spare bit of iron from the eiel tower they didn't chip a bit out the bottom yeah I've thought that as well are they just going to be like riffing out random sections of the Eiffel Tower or they just got the same material let's hope not can't wait I just wish we were back there again oh yes amazing time so although not that train ride back that was pretty bleak well sat next to each other staring into the distance yeah one person went to bed at midnight the other went to bed at 4:00 a.m. guess guesses as to who did what moving on yeah right it's time for news and then we will move on to your questions okay so starting off with some par Olympic news this one shocked me Tattoo Bans in the Paralympics athletes can get banned from the par Olympics if they have an Olympic tattoo or par Olympic tattoo yeah hang on so they can get banned from the paral Olympics if they have a par Olympic or Olympic tattoo but there are so many athletes in the Olympic Games who had Olympic tattoos yeah different rules totally different organizing committees and so on I think so it's it's double standards essentially but yeah you'll have seen mainly I suppose it's more visible for the swimmers because they've got the the men have got their tops off so you can see their quite prominent Olympic ring tattoos on a lot of athletes yeah and there's no sanctions there you are you would get sanctioned or disqualified if you had a tattoo that was considered uh I suppose political not sure about that one but definitely if you had like a brand tattooed on you then you'd have to cover that up like a pretty extreme you wouldn't think about yeah but some people would just like not do that for not even like for sponsorship you might just get like your favorite fast food chain restaurant just tattooed on your chest and then qualify and then you turn into an Olympian and you're like oh can't do this well you'd have to wear a plaster or something over it so in the par Olympics you if you had the Rings or or par Olympic rings the symbols tattooed on you and don't cover them up then you will get disqualified it's a very different and much stricter set of rules yeah I just think seems a bit unnecessary to me yeah I just think that's unnecessary what's your new story right I was going to talk about Spencer Matthews obviously he's done this amazing run which has been through the Jordanian desert where he did uh 30 marathons in 30 days covering 786 miles amazing how I've remembered this uh all all on Sand right on Sand 45 degrees um and he was doing it for um the charity um Make some noise uh it was across you know very tricky tough conditions uh I just want to talk about this on kind of two levels a I think what he's done is absolutely phenomenal and we've seen some incredible Feats when it comes to people doing runs you know we've seen hardest geizer across Africa we've seen you know people doing multiple marathons and we see this more and more often nowadays and I think it's great and it's for charity it's dead important I'm really pleased that you know people are making making are making money for charity for it but then I think sometimes it can it can make normal Runners feel like what they're doing if they're just doing a couch to 5K or they're running their first ever kilometer and they've not done anything sometimes a bit reluctant to share their story that they've done something small when we were at um a big event that we put on a few weeks ago you know someone came up to me one of the the guests and and who was supporting there said I've just done my first 1K it's no big deal isn't it when you hear about these people running across countries and stuff and I was like well you know what everyone's big deal is your own big deal on how you achieve that and I think when you hear about these incredible Feats that are going on at the moment sometimes you can think well actually oh I don't need to talk about mine well actually your big deal is still a big deal yeah I think sometimes people are so tempted to just discount the Milestones because what they perceive to be the like Pinnacle of what they're aiming for like they're not quite they I'm definitely guilty of that where I'm like oh well I need to run this because I want to run this time or I want to run this distance so I'm not even care I just need to get through this but no like celebrate the fact that for you Running with Bears like and the aside me and Rick aren't running in a Paris 2024 games anytime soon so like for us the best that we're doing is the best that we're doing and that's like a huge achievement in itself yeah and I think remember that those those extremes that you see in the news have to be exactly that because so many people do run marathons now people have in order to raise staggering amounts of money when these people are raising millions of pounds whatever it might be then that challenge has to be more extreme in order for the news to kind of care about like that's so that doesn't affect normal people doing incredible normal things I think i' would like to thank them out there in the desert for normalizing taking their shirt off on a run obviously I felt bad about that in Paris so I me they're in the desert I don't think they I don't think they packed t-shirts the pictures that I've seen But know incredible I also they've like obviously faced loads of challenges out there one of them has been GPS so when you're doing a world record attempt to prove it yeah the proving it is actually really difficult so they've all had like a number of different watches on sometimes they've turned up and they just haven't been able to get a GPS signal because you're in the desert because there's been interference from other things I can't get my GPS to work in Camden town but so there was there was one marathon where they had to do I think like three kilometer loops and I think that's like that just shows how when you're like 26 marathons in and you've just got to do 3K Loops like that's that was me drawing my face this week yeah yeah I don't think they paused it to draw the iris right fun times let's do some questions questions just before we start the questions I just want to mention about bears now we talk a lot about bears and I get a lot of abuse about bears on on this podcast yeah but obviously we've mentioned grizzly bears in Canada and black bears in Canada and a lot of Canadians keep emailing Owen and me our producer about these facts yeah and just you know where those Bears might be I'm sorry if sometimes we've not you know placed those bears in exactly the right provinces be watch yeah oh my God colia people emailing in cuz you've got it wrong well not wrong just haven't quite covered it correctly British Columbia has half of Canada's grizzly bears if you're going running in a remote part of British Columbia yeah were bear spray you're listening to the Canadian bear spotting podcast yeah if you if you're bored of the bear chat then rest assured that no one will be listening to this podcast for Bare advice I'm I'm be of it thanks for bearing but you know black bears everywhere bear in kind of sense right Rick Claude is way through there there are no bears in London and Harry has written in from there I love the podcast and listen to extensively during my training block for the London marathon it's been great to hear the varying inspirational stories and scientific based information win quing scientific based I've got a question about my daughter she turned four last week and competed her first Junior park run four days later I need to get round to taking Elizabeth on a junior park run she's not four yet is she she's four yeah oh she just turned four yeah I need to do that she did an incredible job by walking with short bursts of running but she was incredibly disappointed when she saw how slow this is her perception I guess after she after she watched the Olympic games um what's the best way to motivate someone this young she thought she was slow essentially she finished in just over 25 minutes super proud of her thank you very much Harry how far is a junior Running with Kids Park it's 2K 2K yeah 2K so I think she's done a great job there I mean that's my kids that I've taken to to Junior Park when are a little bit older and and even they still Sprint for the first 100 meters and then walk a bit and the more it's because I'm their dad like they don't listen to me so the more I'm like just pace yourself they're like no so I will run so kids are just exactly the same as adults then just Sprint off yes yeah um they're idiots basically the nicest possible way so yeah I don't know how I I think I think that you can motivate them with the classic little kid stuff high fives on the way um the video is difficult because obviously they shouldn't be comparing themselves to to the Olympics um or just film them in the first 10 met when they are sprinting and be like the end a good idea film the film the fastest bit um and yeah just just like try try try and get them to run on a downhill and sort of let themselves go and and feel that slightly faster feeling and stuff like that but also I think it's good to learn at like the age of four that it's it's like a process so like if they the main thing is that you enjoy it but then if they are like competitive and they want to get faster then just be like okay why don't you alternate each week like one week you're going to have fun the next week okay try and see if you can get a little bit faster or try and see if you can not walk when you hit this tree yeah and I think it's just knowing that the a four-year-old's motivation will definitely wne and so if they don't want to go don't don't I wouldn't minutes ruin the fun yeah 25 minutes of concentration for a four-year-old is very impressive I to concentrate for 25 minutes absolutely no chance that's why the podcast is 30 minutes cuz Rick Rick's waning never 30 minutes anymore I know 31 27 I've succumbed pressure 29 30 yeah succumbed Chris from Dublin hi Andy Sarah and Rick my Athletics Club Bal mum AC that's mu have been super helpful and inclusive of my daughter Ella who was born with a brain injury she loves running and being able to run with her and give her the sense of freedom is such an unbelievable gift I just wanted to give a shout out the amazing people from my club who run with her and myself they've also been amazing with helping me train for the Dublin Marathon that's in October where we will both be running oh Chris sent A really lovely picture as well which was an amazing thing to see Dublin Marathon that is on my bucket list so yeah big shout out to balyon AC you guys are absolute Legends and I think actually you're representative of the amazing Runners all over the world all of the clubs all of the people that don't get shouted out as Heroes for just showing up in the rain every week to help people to have a better experience running and all that sort of stuff uh we love you so well done yeah what a lovely way to finish yeah thanks Chris yeah Sarah have you got a favor for us you'll be pleased to know that voting is closed for the British podcast Awards so you can't do that anymore um but please do keep emailing in with your questions especially a little debate because I feel like later in the year we need to get some more debate episodes going on so do you want to know what's an acceptable sock length to where when you're running should Andy take his top off when he goes out for a run or if would you rather send those in oh yeah would you rather or just interesting questions that might be hard to find the answer to on Google I had a great one the other day um in my Instagram DMS of before a race should you or in like in the leadup should you be drinking carbs and drinking electrolytes or does one do both like little questions like that which you might not know the answer to yeah we can get Rick to research the science yeah and then we'll actually give you the science yeah let's just just let's just see what happens all right we'll see you next time bye