Disability Sports Quotes

In para-cycling I am a veteran with Olympic medals now.

Having adaptive events televised in the X Games is huge. There are people out there who might want to do this but don't think they can. They can see us out here tearing it up. That's going to help people realize that if you want something bad enough, you can get there.

I think it's phenomenal and expected that Paralympians will take on able bodied people more and more. In dressage, it happens all the time. But there are very few adaptions, and they are never allowed to give you an advantage.

It's kind of mind-blowing what some of us adaptive athletes can accomplish as far as physical sports.

The Paralympics have for too long been considered the poor cousin of the Olympics. It's always run after the main games and rarely gets anything like the media coverage.

From the very start in 1969, I wanted to be a part of helping our Special Olympics athletes succeed. I wanted to be on Eunice Shirver's team as another set of eyes, another set of hands and a heart working to be there for them, finding a way to help them be the best they can be.

People like Ellie Simmonds, David Weir, and Hannah Cockroft have become superstars alongside the likes of Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis. I think it has changed attitudes to disability.

In 2012, I was invited to a ski event called the Hartford Ski Spectacular to learn how to sit-ski for the first time. I loved it, but it was not pretty - I was not good. I didn't know how to stop, so I kept throwing myself on the ground.

Magic is the Special Olympics of entertainment.

Just because we are in wheelchairs doesn't mean we can't play a fast-paced, full-contact sport.

I never in a million years thought I would be able to be a Paralympic athlete.

Paralympics... fascinating because just watching anyone with a major disability trying to do everyday chores is fun to watch.

I got into hand-cycling to prove to myself that I could do it and get back into some form of competition, and now it's led to this. If someone had suggested a few years ago that I would be taking it to the Ironman, I would have asked them what they were smoking.

To be able to wear your country's colors and compete in the Paralympics for the snowboard team... it's pretty powerful.

I played college soccer before I was hurt, and just to be able to jump back into something that you could be so competitive at or you can achieve, to get to the Paralympics, that's the first really big achievement that you can have. It's the second biggest sporting event in the world. To be a part of it and to get a medal for that, it's unreal.

The Paralympians have lifted the cloud of limitation.

There are more challenges as an amputee than I had when I was racing with both my legs beforehand but it's something I enjoy doing and something that is part of me.

People aren't familiar with wheelchair sports. The only film crew in Athens for the Paralympics was the documentary crew.

I didn't find out about the Paralympics until I was 18 years old. Once I found out what the Paralympics were, I was so excited to know I had a chance to represent my country and wear Team U.S.A. on my back.

I learned that people in wheelchairs are allowed to have marathons … which, to me, seems like cheating, but what are you gonna say?

A lot of times, people think 'para' as far as 'paralyzed.' 'Para' means 'alongside,' so the Paralympics are alongside the Olympics on the same courses, the same hills.

The poster boy for our superabled future is Oscar Pistorius, an increasingly famous South African sprinter who happens to have had both of his legs amputated below the knee. Using upside down question mark-shaped carbon fiber sprinting prosthetics, called Cheetah blades, Mr. Pistorius can challenge the fastest sprinters in the world.

Paralympics has always had to push the media into it being about sport and not focusing on the disability.

I was a torch carrier in the 2012 Paralympics and every time I thought 'I can't do this' I would look at the blade runners and the athletes and wheelchairs think, okay, I can run.

That's really what the Paralympics is about: these amazing athletes and this technology that's allowing them to reach their full potential.