Thursday 23 August 2012

The Squeaky Sounding Paralympians

Before he was outed as a tax dodger, comedian Jimmy Carr was being howled at for a joke he made that due to the the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Great Britain would have a great Paralympics team.
While Carr was apologising, the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre were holding a series of Paralympic Talent ID Days and over 50 ex-servicemen were identified as potential Paralympians so you could say Carr was right, thanks to our misguided wars, our paralympic squad has been strengthened.
Great Britain has a great record at the Paralympics, in Beijing in 2008 we came second behind China and finished 6 golds above the USA in third place and more of the same is expected this time around especially as we are the home nation.
Although the Paralympics are not as tainted by drug cheats as the Olympic games, drugs are not the only thing the checkers are looking for such as a piece of string poking out the bottom of a male competitors shorts is a dead give-away.
Competitors with spinal injuries sometimes indulge in 'boosting' to up their performance which involves increasing their blood pressure by overfilling the bladder, sitting on a drawing pin, over tightening of straps, twisting or tying string around their testicles or breaking a bone and is banned by the International Paralympics Committee.
When able-bodied competitors engage in physical activities like running or swimming, blood pressure and heart rate increase automatically but athletes with spinal injuries don't get that response so "'boosting' is a quick fix to higher blood pressure and the improved performance that comes with it.
The IPC says it will monitor athletes closely before events at the London games and anyone showing symptoms of 'boosting', including sweating, skin blotches and goose bumps will be subjected to blood pressure checks.
I think it might be easy to spot the one's with the tied up testicles or full bladders, they will be the ones with tears in their eyes and conduct the post race interviews in a voice that would shame Joe Pasquale.

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