I have been trying to find some good paralympics coverage, and I have to say that CTV dropped the ball on this one. Their website was great for mainstream Olympics, but actually pretty terrible for papralympics, especially considering they are on now!  I have a new poster by my office showing the medal count for Sweden and Canada (none so far) and I will update it the way I did for the mainstream events. Hopefully we get some medals soon! McKeever seems a safe bet, anyway. Competing against him will be a Swedish guy from Östersund. One of my work buddies Thomas lives in Östersund, and one of his buddies is a leader for a blind XC skier. There was a neat little vignette about them on the news. The leader skis in front and uses a cox box (like for rowing or dragon boating) and the skier follows the voice, and maybe gets some instruction about what is coming (hills, turns, other skiers, etc.). This particular leader says “bra… bra… bra…”, Swedish for “good… good… good…”.  A long time ago when I lived in Victoria I peddled a tandem bike with a blind athlete. she had been involved with BC blind sports for many years and had a lot of experience . I am not a very strong biker, but she was. She gave me lots of tips on when to change the gears and how to work together. It is kind of ironic that I was supposed to be the sighted ‘leader’, but she was really calling the shots.
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Canada has 3 medals now! Three silver and one gold – Brian McKeever of course! Haven’t been watching as much tv as during the Olympics but we did see the opening ceremonies (great Terry Fox tribute) and one sledge hockey game, Canada vs Italy. Tomorrow we’re going to a sledge hockey match, USA vs Japan. There are still long lineups for some of the activities that are still on, notably the BC Pavilion at the art gallery (great for kids, big and little) and the Mint Pavilion which has moved to the library. Apparently the Mint had a 4 or 5 hour lineup on the first day! The zipline is still running until the end of March but not sure how busy it’s been.