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| Nationality | Finnish | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | 24 July 1976 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | Para-athletics Wheelchair rugby | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Disability class | T51 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Club | Espoon Tapiot | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Coached by | Jari Nordblom Heini Sistonen Teemu Janhunen Marko Hyytiäinen Rauno Saunavaara | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Toni Piispanen (born 24 July 1976) is a Finnish Paralympic athlete.
He started as an able-bodied karate competitor and became disabled due to an accident that injured his spinal cord at a karate show in 1993. This accident occurred in Lahti in front of hundreds of spectators. After that he played Wheelchair rugby for fifteen years before switching to wheelchair racing in 2008. [1] He is a world record holder in his classification. [2] At the 2012 Summer Paralympics he won gold in the men’s T-51 class 100-metre wheelchair sprint. [3]
The 2016 Summer Paralympics, the 15th Summer Paralympic Games, were a major international multi-sport event for athletes with disabilities governed by the International Paralympic Committee, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 7 to 18 September 2016. The Games marked the first time a Latin American and South American city hosted the event, the second Southern Hemisphere city and nation, the first one being the 2000 Summer Paralympics in Sydney, and also the first time a Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) country hosted the event. These Games saw the introduction of two new sports to the Paralympic program: canoeing and the paratriathlon.
Sir Philip Lee Craven is an English sports administrator, former Paralympic wheelchair basketball player, swimmer and track and field athlete. Between 2001 and 2017 he was the second president of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).
Andrey Meshcheryakov is a Russian swimmer and wheelchair curler. He has represented Russia at both the IPC World Championships and the 2012 Summer Paralympics. As a curler he was a participant of the 2018 Winter Paralympic games and World Wheelchair Curling Championships of 2019, 2020; he is a 2020 World champion.
James P. Armstrong is a former Canadian curler and wheelchair curler now living in Ontario. He was a successful able-bodied curler for much of his career until he had to stop playing because of bad knees and a car accident in 2003.
Arly Aristides Velásquez Peñaloza is a Paralympian who represented Mexico at the 2010 Winter Paralympics, along with teammate Armando Ruiz. Velasquez broke his back in a mountain biking accident in 2001. After trying many wheelchair sports, such as shot put, wheelchair basketball and tennis, he discovered the sport of mono-skiing. Mono-skiing is similar to skiing for able-bodied however, athletes sit on a single ski with crutch-like ski poles using their hips to make turns. Velásquez also represented Mexico at the 2014, 2018 and 2022 Winter Paralympics.
Josh Cassidy is a Canadian wheelchair racer.
El Salvador first competed in the Paralympic Games at the 2000 Summer Paralympics in Sydney, Australia. It has participated in the Summer Paralympic Games every four years since that time. El Salvador has never taken part in the Winter Paralympics, and until Tokyo 2020, no Salvadorian had won a Paralympic medal. In 2021, Herbert Aceituno became the first athlete to win a medal, earning bronze in powerlifting at the 59 kg category.
Angela Ballard is an Australian Paralympic athlete who competes in T53 wheelchair sprint events. She became a paraplegic at age 7 due to a car accident.
Justin Cain Eveson, OAM is an Australian swimmer and wheelchair basketball player who has won Paralympic medals in both sports.
Marcel Eric Hug is a Paralympic athlete from Switzerland competing in category T54 wheelchair racing events. Hug, nicknamed 'The Silver Bullet', has competed in four Summer Paralympic Games for Switzerland, winning two bronze medals in his first Games in Athens in 2004. In 2010 he set four world records in four days, and at the 2011 World Championships he won a gold in the 10,000 metres and four silver medals, losing the gold in three events to long term rival David Weir. This rivalry continued into the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, where Hug won two silvers, in the 800m and the marathon. In the 2013 World Championships Hug dominated the field, winning five golds and a silver. During the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio, Hug was one of the most consistent competitors in the T54 class, winning two golds, in the 800m and marathon, and two silvers medals, in the 1500m and 5000m.
Jason Lachance is a paralympic wheelchair racer from Canada competing mainly in sprint events.
Gregory Stephen Smith, OAM is an Australian Paralympic athlete and wheelchair rugby player who won three gold medals in athletics at the 2000 Summer Paralympics, and a gold medal in wheelchair rugby at the 2012 Summer Paralympics, where he was the flag bearer at the opening ceremony.
Chris Waddell is an American Paralympic sit-skier and wheelchair track athlete. He is also a NBC Sports TV host. He was a promising non-disabled skier while attending Middlebury College in Vermont, before a skiing accident left him paralysed from the waist down.
Sam McIntosh is an Australian Paralympic athlete who races in the T52 100m, 200m, and 400m events. He holds 3 Australian National Records and 2 Oceania Records. He represented Australia at the 2012 London Paralympic Games, 2016 Rio Paralympics, 2020 Tokyo Paralympics and the 2024 Paris Paralympics in athletics as well as the 2011, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2023 Para Athletic World Championships.
Walid Ktila is a Paralympic wheelchair racer from Tunisia who competes in short and middle distances in the T34 category. He won all 100–800 m events at the 2013, 2015 and 2017 world championships. At the 2012 and 2016 Paralympics he won three gold and one silver medal.
Anton Datsko is a Ukrainian wheelchair fencer who won gold medal at IWAS Wheelchair Fencing Grand Prix in Eger, Hungary, won gold medal at the Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and won a silver medal at the Paralympic Games in London in 2012.
Brent Lakatos is a Canadian wheelchair racer in the T53 classification. Lakatos has represented Canada at four Summer Paralympics, and at the 2012 Games he won three silver medals in the sprint and mid-distance events. In 2013 Lakatos reached the pinnacle of his sport when he collected four gold medals at the IPC Athletics World Championships and became world champion at his classification in the 100m, 200m and 400m events.
Peter Genyn is a Paralympian sportsman from Belgium. Initially Genyn competed as a wheelchair rugby player before switching to track and field athletics in 2014 where he competes in category T51 sprint events. In 2016 he became the world record holder in the T51 men's 400 metres sprint.
Paul Aksel Johansen is a Norwegian wheelchair curler and sport shooter.
Aaron Pike is an American athlete who competes in wheelchair racing, biathlon, and cross-country skiing. He has competed at the 2012, 2016 and 2020 Summer Paralympics, as well as the 2014, 2018 and 2022 Winter Paralympics. Pike finished second at the 2022 Boston Marathon, third at the 2021 and 2022 Chicago Marathons, and fourth at the 2018 and 2019 New York City Marathons as well as the 2021 Boston Marathon. He won multiple medals at the 2023 World Para Nordic Skiing Championships, including winning the 12.5 km seated event.
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