Para athletes don t-shirts, ski through slushy snow as Paralympics feels the heat

ZHANGJIAKOU − Cross-country skiers ploughed through slushy snow wearing t-shirts on day five of the Beijing Winter Paralympics today as spring-like weather pushed temperatures well above freezing.

The warm spell caught some skiers off guard on the largely man-made snow at the Zhangjiakou cross-country event where six gold medals were up for grabs.

Athletes in the Olympics last month at the same venue had battled blizzard conditions and a brutal wind chill with some events postponed because of the weather.

Norwegian cross-country skier Birgit Skarstein, who competes in the women’s sitting category, likened the weather to July in Norway as temperatures in the nearby Zhangjiakou city nudged a balmy 17°C.

Up on the slopes, temperatures were around ten degrees cooler but still well above freezing as the artificial snow began to melt.

“It was really sucky conditions out there, you could feel the skis being drawn into the ground,” she told AFP.

“You pull and you feel like you’re stuck in glue,” said Skarstein, who raced in short sleeves.

“It was really slushy,” she said, adding at times she felt like her exhausted arms would fall off. “These kinds of conditions draw your energy out of the body.”

Paralympians recalled that they had endured similar warm conditions at PyeongChang 2018 and Sochi 2014 while organisers were forced to bring Saturday’s snowboarding forward a day because of a “high risk of rainfall and snow melting”.

Poland’s Iweta Faron, who races in the women’s standing event, said the warm conditions required a change of skis and she wasn’t used to them as her team hadn’t undertaken training in warmer weather.

American Aaron Pike, who competed in a t-shirt, said the cross-country track was super-fast for the qualifying round but was getting slower and slower.

“I was honestly hoping it would still be winter out here,” Pike told AFP.

“It’s slowing everyone down. For people with less function, they’re not using their abs, they’re not using their back, they’re not throwing their body into all the pull strokes, they are just using their arms. 

“When it’s slow like this, they’re going to suffer a little bit more for sure.”

At the wheelchair curling rink today, there were victories for Sweden against Norway, South Korea against Estonia and hosts China against Slovakia in the round-robin.

At Beijing’s ice cube, Italy’s para-ice hockey team later face Korea while China will meet the Czech Republic. – AFP, March 9, 2022