If you happened to be in the historic town of George in South Africa’s Western Cape last weekend, you’d have seen an extraordinary sight. At 8.15am on Valentine’s Day, 625 competitors were lined up at the start of the world’s biggest, brightest wheelchair race: the Outeniqua Wheelchair Challenge.

Buggies, tricycles, adapted bicycles mingled with sleek racing wheelchairs and hand cycles. South African Paralympic hero and world record holder Ernst van Dyk prepared himself for the marathon alongside athletes who had traveled from France, Namibia and Zimbabwe and all over the country to attend.

On the other side of the partition were a motley collection of participants in the fun race – from disabled 2-year-old babies to a 95-year-old granny in a buggy. It was both bizarre and wonderful.

Bizarre because South Africa is not generally known as a pioneer in promoting disability rights. That may be changing. ]]> femmefatale 2009-02-20T16:26:08-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2008/5/24/34458/0699

Our own femme fatale, Monica Guy, has the pre-Olympics buzz from Beijing for us this week.

How many people with disabilities are there in China? It's a tricky question. The China Disabled Persons' Federation say it's 60 million, a recent BBC report says 83 million and estimates based on the World Health Organization's population model are upwards of 125 million. But discrepancies of few million make little difference in a country of 1.3 billion people, and until now at least, nobody has much cared about the actual number.

In fact, when Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, Britain's Paralympic athlete who's earned 11 gold medals, first went to Beijing, locals would to poke her to determine whether or not she was real.

The expected visit of just 4,000 more disabled people to Beijing this September seems, bizarrely, to have galvanized the Chinese authorities into action over accessibility. In terms of numbers, it's like a pinprick on an elephant's rump. But these disabled visitors are special: They're the Paralympic athletes, and they'll be trailed by 6,000 journalists.]]> femmefatale 2008-05-30T16:45:01-05:00 Search Jaunted string http://www.jaunted.com/search/