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Handcycling
Fowlmead Country Park is the venue for the Handcycling UK Championships, a a world-class venue that helps to raise the appeal of the sport. View Transcript
View Synopsis
ALEXANDER HINX-EDWARDS reports.
Here at Fowlmead on the south Kent coast, 200 acres of country park has become home to a two-mile race track, drawing cycling professionals and enthusiasts from all over the country. Today however, a lesser-known group of top athletes were getting into gear, for the chance to win a National Handcycling Chamionship race.
Among them was current Handcycling World Champion and Paralympic gold medallist, Rachel Morris, who explained the tough sport and how it felt to grab gold in Beijing last year!
RACHEL MORRIS, Handcycling, Paralympic Gold Medallist: 'It was an absolute dream! It's a bit of a cliché, but it was - everything came together - everything coming together on the day when you train for everything. You've obviously got this ultimate dream and ultimate goal, so for everything to come together on that day was just completely out of this world!'
There's different categories depending on your disability. It's basically A, B and C. For handcyclists you have Cs that have an amputate, say below leg, category B is generally people with spinal injuries, and category A is people who have got higher spinal injuries so it affects their arms as well. So there's the three categories and then they go off depending on the factoring so there's [sic] factors worked out on the disability categories.'
But its not just record-breaking paralympians that can take up the sport! Handcycles have grown in popularity overseas and are a regular sight at human-powered transport meetings.
So after all that Handcycling has done in just five years as a paralympic sport, could it still get bigger and better? And can events like this help?
JAYNE BARRETT, British Paracycling Development Coach: 'I think paracycling as a sport, the profile could benefit an awful lot from people getting involved and people coming to watch the races and things like the National Series which we've had on, which is the race in Kent, is a part of.
RACHEL MORRIS: 'Hopefully it will bring all the riders together and hopefully it will move everything forward and find the new riders that are out there.'
CHRIS HESPE, Head of Sport, Leisure and Olympics, KCC: 'This site is deemed to be the best criterium circuit for this form of cycling in the UK by a long stretch; it is the best. And we're making sure that it is recognised throughout the UK as being the best throughout northern Europe and we want it to be recognised throughout the world as being a major site for this sort of event. But also we need to make sure that mainstream sport actually recognise disability sport and that's why it's so important today that we've had an able-bodied cycling event as a precursor to this Paralympic level event.'
As far as Handcycling is concerned, we may have only just invented the wheel, but with such true stars as Rachel and the future of British Paracycling training at this fantastic facility in Kent, we can hope to see British Handcycling off to a flying start before the Paralympics come to home soil in 2012!
Here at Fowlmead on the south Kent coast, 200 acres of country park has become home to a two-mile race track, drawing cycling professionals and enthusiasts from all over the country. Today however, a lesser-known group of top athletes were getting into gear, for the chance to win a National Handcycling Chamionship race.
Among them was current Handcycling World Champion and Paralympic gold medallist, Rachel Morris, who explained the tough sport and how it felt to grab gold in Beijing last year!
RACHEL MORRIS, Handcycling, Paralympic Gold Medallist: 'It was an absolute dream! It's a bit of a cliché, but it was - everything came together - everything coming together on the day when you train for everything. You've obviously got this ultimate dream and ultimate goal, so for everything to come together on that day was just completely out of this world!'
There's different categories depending on your disability. It's basically A, B and C. For handcyclists you have Cs that have an amputate, say below leg, category B is generally people with spinal injuries, and category A is people who have got higher spinal injuries so it affects their arms as well. So there's the three categories and then they go off depending on the factoring so there's [sic] factors worked out on the disability categories.'
But its not just record-breaking paralympians that can take up the sport! Handcycles have grown in popularity overseas and are a regular sight at human-powered transport meetings.
So after all that Handcycling has done in just five years as a paralympic sport, could it still get bigger and better? And can events like this help?
JAYNE BARRETT, British Paracycling Development Coach: 'I think paracycling as a sport, the profile could benefit an awful lot from people getting involved and people coming to watch the races and things like the National Series which we've had on, which is the race in Kent, is a part of.
RACHEL MORRIS: 'Hopefully it will bring all the riders together and hopefully it will move everything forward and find the new riders that are out there.'
CHRIS HESPE, Head of Sport, Leisure and Olympics, KCC: 'This site is deemed to be the best criterium circuit for this form of cycling in the UK by a long stretch; it is the best. And we're making sure that it is recognised throughout the UK as being the best throughout northern Europe and we want it to be recognised throughout the world as being a major site for this sort of event. But also we need to make sure that mainstream sport actually recognise disability sport and that's why it's so important today that we've had an able-bodied cycling event as a precursor to this Paralympic level event.'
As far as Handcycling is concerned, we may have only just invented the wheel, but with such true stars as Rachel and the future of British Paracycling training at this fantastic facility in Kent, we can hope to see British Handcycling off to a flying start before the Paralympics come to home soil in 2012!
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