Paralympics Days 4 & 5: Kicking Ass and Taking Names

Day 3: I had tickets to go see several events in one of the venues outside the main Olympic Park today in a place called the ExCell center. There were 5 different sports going on simultaneously, and I went and watched all of them for at least a few minutes. I have to say that I'm not overly excited watching Boccia (Bocci ball, but those who throw the ball, from what it looked like, generally have a major sort of physical disability like MS), but it was definitely interesting to watch these people throw a ball with more accuracy than I would have. I also watched some fencing, once again not my favorite, but interesting to watch them compete in something like that while in wheelchairs. Table tennis has various levels of disability, some are ambulatory, some are not, and some of those who can walk have severe gait problems.

Then there was powerlifting. The only lift that is done in the Paralympics is the bench press and legs must generally be strapped down. I watched the end of the women's finals match, where the woman from Nigeria won after bench pressing 162 kg (291 lbs) and later on in the day, I watched the men's finals and saw a new Paralympic lifting record set at 280 kg (617 lbs) by the guy from Iran. He attempted to set a new world record at 301 kg (663 lbs), and he actually did bench it, but his form was not perfect enough to count it as an official lift. It was an incredible feat, though! Then I was able to watch the women's Team USA sitting volleyball sweep their games to make it on to the finals and compete for the gold on Friday.

That afternoon I went to the men's wheelchair basketball game against Germany and watched them play and win a great game to take them in to the semi-finals match on Thursday. After the game, I hung out, had a couple beers (yes, I actually drank, all you nonbelivers) and just relaxed with a couple friends.

Day 4: Today was a little bit less eventful. Since there was no more powerlifting, the only thing that I was really interested to watch was sitting volleyball over in the ExCell arena, so I did. I watched the first couple games of the match for 5th/6th place and then decided to leave since I was pretty tired from staying out late. I did get the chance to run into Mario Rodriguez again from fencing and talk to him a little bit. Unfortunately, no one from Team USA in fencing got past the pool round, which is pretty bad. He said that it was the worst they had done since he could remember, so obviously he was a little disappointed.

In the afternoon I went back to my hostel and took a little nap, then met up with some of the spouses for the men's WCBB game before going in. I ran into one of the player's long-term girlfriend on the subway the day before and told her who I was and she invited me to sit and cheer with them since I had been sitting by myself. It was nice to be able to actually cheer with some people for a change, and I made a new friend, which is the whole point of having new adventures :)

The guys put up a hard fight, but in the end they fell short to Australia by a few points. They still have a chance for bronze tomorrow night, so hopefully they'll be coming home with some sort of hardware, but they all took it pretty hard, understandably.

Today is a day of some sightseeing in the morning and then the sitting VB bronze and gold matches, so it'll be a good day (although, really, how can it not be a good day while I'm here?!). There will eventually be more pictures here and on facebook, but I don't have time right now, so you can all use your imagination in the meantime. Tschus!!