A triathlon is an endurance multisport race consisting of swimming, cycling, and running over various distances. Triathletes compete for fastest overall completion time, racing each segment sequentially with the time transitioning between the disciplines included. The word is of Greek origin, from τρεῖς or treis (three) and ἆθλος or athlos (competition).
Richard Marvin Hansen is a Canadian track and field athlete, activist, and philanthropist for people with disabilities. Following a pickup truck crash at the age of 15, Hansen sustained a spinal cord injury and became a paraplegic. Hansen is most famous for his Man in Motion World Tour, in which he circled the globe in a wheelchair to raise funds for charity. He was inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 2006. He was one of the final torchbearers in the 1988 Winter Olympics and the 2010 Winter Olympics. He was profiled and spoke during the 2010 Winter Paralympics opening ceremony.
Carys Davina Grey-Thompson, Baroness Grey-Thompson,, is a Welsh life peeress, television presenter and former wheelchair racer.
Amy Deloris Van Dyken-Rouen is an American former competitive swimmer, Olympic champion, former world record-holder, and national radio sports talk show co-host. She won six Olympic gold medals in her career, four of which she won at the 1996 Summer Olympics, making her the first American woman to accomplish such a feat and the most successful athlete at the 1996 Summer Olympics. She won gold in the 50-meter freestyle, 100-meter butterfly, 4×100-meter freestyle relay, and 4×100-meter medley relay.
WheelPower is the national organisation for wheelchair sports in the United Kingdom, and aims to help people with disabilities improve their quality of life.
Wheelchair racing is the racing of wheelchairs in track and road races. Wheelchair racing is open to athletes with any qualifying type of disability, including leg amputees, spinal cord injuries, and cerebral palsy. Athletes are classified in accordance with the nature and severity of their disability or combinations of disabilities. Like running, it can take place on a track or as a road race. The main competitions take place at the Summer Paralympics which wheelchair racing and athletics has been a part of since 1960. Competitors compete in specialized wheelchairs which allow the athletes to reach speeds of 30 km/h (18.6 mph) or more. It is one of the most prominent forms of Paralympic athletics.
John Alexander Maclean, OAM is an Australian triathlete, rower, and motivational speaker. A promising rugby league player in his youth, he became a paraplegic after being knocked from his bicycle by a truck in 1988. He subsequently became the first paraplegic to finish the Ironman World Championship and the first to swim the English Channel. Later, he was part of the athletics team at both the Olympics and Paralympics in 2000, and won a silver medal in rowing at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. In 2014, he completed the Nepean Triathlon without using a wheelchair, after regaining some use of his legs through Ware K Tremor therapy. He is the founder of the John Maclean Foundation, which assists wheelchair users under the age of 18. As a motivational speaker, his clients have included eBay and Pfizer.
S3, SB2, SM3 are disability swimming classifications used for categorising swimmers based on their level of disability. People in this class have decent arm and hand function, but no use of their trunk and legs. They have severe disabilities in all their limbs. Swimmers in this class have a variety of different disabilities including quadriplegia from spinal cord injury, severe cerebral palsy and multiple amputations.
Pauline Jean English,, is an Australian paraplegic swimmer, who won five medals at two Paralympics. She later became the first person with a disability to swim across Sydney Harbour.
Claire Lomas is a British campaigner, fundraiser and former event rider. She became a paraplegic as a result of a riding accident in 2007. In 2012, she finished the 32nd Virgin London Marathon in 17 days using the ReWalk robotic suit.
Light Motion Dance Company is a two-woman integrated dance company based in Seattle, combining a wheelchair dancer and an able-bodied dancer in performances.
Alastair Smales was born on 8 May 1962, in Australia. He lost the use of his legs in 1992 becoming a paraplegic after a four-wheel drive he was fixing slipped off a jack and fell on him. Due to this injury, Smales is now classified a S6 wheelchair grade in swimming competitions.
Mary Puthisseril Verghese (1925–1986) was a physician in India who was among the earliest pioneers of Physical medicine and rehabilitation in the country. Mary Verghese was instilled in a home where love and respect were two main factors in their close knit family. She was caring of others and wanted to give back to her community in any way that she could. In 1963, she took charge of what was the first department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation with an inpatient facility in India at the Christian Medical College, Vellore. She was instrumental in expanding the services of the department with the establishment of the first inpatient rehabilitation institute of the country in 1966. In recognition of her contributions to the field of medicine, she was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 1972.
Samantha May Kinghorn is a Scottish World Champion wheelchair racer.
Wheelchair sport classification is a system designed to allow fair competition between people of different disabilities, and minimize the impact of a person's specific disability on the outcome of a competition. Wheelchair sports is associated with spinal cord injuries, and includes a number of different types of disabilities including paraplegia, quadriplegia, muscular dystrophy, post-polio syndrome and spina bifida. The disability must meet minimal body function impairment requirements. Wheelchair sport and sport for people with spinal cord injuries is often based on the location of lesions on the spinal cord and their association with physical disability and functionality.
Emily Tapp is an Australian wheelchair Paralympic athlete and triathlete. She was selected to represent Australia at the 2016 Rio Paralympics in athletics but was forced to withdraw before the Games due to a burns injury. She represented Australia at the 2020 Summer Paralympics in paratriathlon.
Nic Beveridge is an elite Australian triathlete with a disability. He represented Australia at the 2016 Rio Paralympics when Triathlon made its debut at the Games and 2020 Tokyo Paralympics. He represented Australia at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games where he won a silver medal.
Lauren Parker is an Australian paratriathlete. She won a silver medal at the 2020 Summer Paralympics.
Pauline Alice Roycroft Stansfield was a New Zealand disability rights advocate. Having trained as a nurse, in 1969 she was paralysed from the waist down after a bus accident in Russia. From the 1970s she became involved with organisations supporting people with disabilities including the Paraplegic Association and the North Shore Disabled Persons Assembly, and advocated for the rights of people with disabilities. She also worked as a piano teacher. In 2017 she published her autobiography, Russia Changed My Life.
