We’re just a week away from the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio!

By Tom Jamison

The Scottish athletes selected for ParalympicsGB will travel to Brazil with a huge weight of expectation as well as excitement around them. Paralympians devote their lives to the genuinely hard graft of a relentless training regime just for a shot at glory that might last for just a few brief seconds; it’s that which makes the Games so utterly tantalising.

The Paralympics provides great sporting moments and inspiration to millions of people around the world and no doubt this year the Games will again deliver.

Our Paralympic preview tells it from the people involved, the athletes, who were mostly, at the time of writing, awaiting decisions on selection. It’s incredible how sports can inspire and bring out truly great things in people. Here then, is a selection of the opinions, wisdom, experience, hope, inspiration – and a few predictions, from those in the know.

Let the Games begin!

Is sport for me?

I didn’t try any sport until I was 19 but now sport’s taking me to Rio – it’s amazing! – Hannah Dines, Cycling

With judo I didn’t really need to see very well. I tried many sports and this is the one that I enjoyed, both in terms of the nature of the game and also in that it fits in with my disability. I’m not someone who says that ‘you can always get around it’ – you can’t. Nobody who’s blind is going to be in Formula One racing – that’s just not going to happen. But what you can do is try to find something that it compatible with your disability. – Sam Ingram, Judo

You don’t have to do sport to the level that we (Paralympians) do – by any means. I was quite a shy person and didn’t really deal well with social situations at all and I found getting into sport encouraged me to talk with people and to enjoy being with people. That social aspect was crucial as well. – Neil Fachie, Cycling

How does your disability impact your sport?

During the early years I was in a wheelchair, so while I enjoyed swimming and was good at it, I wasn’t around people facing similar challenges to me. Then at 10 years old I was selected to the District Regional Programme but I was struggling with the dry side training because of my hip. It was then conversations opened up with Scottish Swimming about Classification and in 2013 when I got really serious about my swimming I went through Classification for the first time. This took place in Stirling, then in Sheffield with International Classification just ahead of Glasgow (2014 Commonwealth Games).  I suppose the time between being first classified and being selected for Team Scotland was relatively short, it doesn’t feel short to me as I’ve been swimming for such a long time. – Erraid Davies, Swimming

My disability is cerebral palsy so it feels like I’m doing resistance exercise every time I move. It also really affects my balance so I’ve never been able to ride a two-wheeled bike. – Hannah Dines, Cycling

We train alongside the able-bodied squad and we’re at the same track sessions so we’re kind of integrated. I hope other sports learn from that. – Neil Fachie, Cycling

Attitude

Arrogance is when you don’t care about what other people think and I’m definitely not that sort of person. I care about the people around me and actually boccia’s quite a team sport and there really is no place for arrogance. – David Smith, Boccia

I try to represent myself in the best way I possibly can by staying composed and being polite to people when they speak to me; all of those sorts of things – the way you carry yourself. That’s the best lesson I can give to anybody else I suppose.

Let’s just try to represent the British public in the best way we can. – Sam Ingram, Judo

Anybody can have an off-day race or they could have a good race so I think I’m going to be focussed on my own performance and let them (my rivals) deal with it themselves. I’ve got enough to deal with already – there’s so many things that can happen in that two and a half hours when you’re running. Just focus on yourself, you’ve got enough to worry about. – Derek Rae, Athletics

Setbacks

I think it’s literally about finding that fine line and thinking about whether or not you’re going to benefit. Sometimes it hurts and I think – this is not great – it’s quite sore but on the other hand you’ve got to think, is it going to make it worse? Sometimes it’s just a bit sore because it’s not 100% – but it’s not sore enough to do nothing – or too sore to do something and it doesn’t feel right. You do need to test these things because if you just back-off every time something is a little bit painful then you’ll not progress or move forward.

In training I’m sometimes chucking my guts up and I’m physically in pain and I’ve got really bad muscle soreness but it’s actually not going to do me any harm. It’s knowing the boundary. It can be painful because it’s hard work. You need to try to determine the difference between different types of pain – it’s knowing and understanding what you’re actually feeling and sometimes you don’t know that until you’ve experienced different types of pain. – Libby Clegg, Athletics

Being Scottish in a British team

I cry at the sound of bagpipes – they’re beautiful! – Hannah Dines, Cycling

People ask me about it but to me Loughborough is my training base – it’s not my home. My family all moved to Scotland in 2002 so for me that’s where the majority of my life has been – also when I was up-and-coming as a development athlete Scotland supported me in my teenage years.

They supported me, so for me, it wasn’t really a question of which one to pick, I was always going to compete for Scotland in my mind. – Libby Clegg, Athletics

Team Scotland and the Commonwealth Games only happens every four years so it is very special, but so is competing for Great Britain. I’ve been on the British programme for about a year now so I know the people and I know the team. While I compete against them, we are also friends and we are there to support each other as well as race so it’s good. – Erraid Davies, Swimming

The importance of disability sport

I think sport is proven to give anybody a sense of teamwork and a competitive drive, getting the ‘inner caveman’ out, dealing with emotions and all of that stuff. I don’t think it’s any more important (for disabled people) but I would say that if able-bodied people can have it, then why can’t we? – David Smith, Boccia

Lessons from London

London was my first Paralympics and it’s true what they say in that you can never truly prepare for it until you’ve been. When you go there you realise the scale of it – the security, the supporters and timings and everything is so rigid. I’ve been preparing for the last few years to be honest and I feel more ready for this one than I did for London.  – Stephen McGuire, Boccia

Can ParalympicsGB beat their London 2012 performance?

There’s every possibility that we could match it. As long as we go out there and do the job that we’re supposed to do I think we’ll achieve our targets. That vibe went through the whole (athletes’) village (at London 2012) whereby there was an expectation that all athletes had to ‘stand up’. – Scot Quinn, Swimming

I’d like to think so. The guys we have around now have a massive amount of experience and there are people coming up like myself and Megan Giglia. There’s a really good mix. There’s lots of enthusiasm around at the moment. – Steve Bate, Cycling

Technical

You become used to going for a bike ride and looking at the computer telling you what your heart rate is and what your cadence is. Now I can’t go for a bike ride without wanting a computer telling me all these things! – Karen Darke, Cycling

I love what I do but there are days when you kind of wish you weren’t doing it. There’s a lot of pain involved in training day-in, day-out. Sometimes you feel rough for it but it certainly beats an office job and I wouldn’t change it for the world. – Neil Fachie, Cycling

I’m a road racer. You have to race in a bunch and it’s all about the eye-contact and watching what people are doing. – Hannah Dines, Cycling

How does it feel to pull on the GB kit?

I’ve not been involved in parasports for long. My first Great Britain vest was last year in the London Marathon and I ran that this year again. I ran 2hours 40mins last year and 2.37 this year. It makes you speechless. It’s fine to talk about it but when you actually sit and think about what’s going on, it’ very surreal – I never imagined it. Six years ago (this month) I had my accident and never in a month of Sundays did I ever expect to be running for Scotland which was an honour, so running for Great Britain was amazing. – Derek Rae, Athletics

I’m super excited… You can never take it for granted; some races go your way and some don’t. I do what I do because I love riding my bike and I want to be the best that I can at it. It’s a privilege. – Karen Darke, Cycling

I’m a very sharing person and I don’t really enjoy it until I can share it with a large group of people.  – Hannah Dines, Cycling

Predictions

You can’t write off the reigning Paralympic Champion, (Yasuhiro) Tanaka (Japan) in the 100m breaststroke and you’ve got the reigning World Champion, Marc  Evers (The Netherlands) and Marco Koch (Germany), the European Champion this year and then you’ve got another British athlete, Aaron Moores who’s the World Record holder and number one in the world  – so it’s anyone’s game.

I’m hoping it’s going to be an event for everyone to enjoy. The S14 100m breaststroke is going to be quite tough but then all of the S14’s are going to be quite tough. – Scot Quinn, Swimming

In terms of boccia we’ve got half an eye on Brazil. They’re the home country and reigning Paralymmpic Champions. They’re the ones to watch. They beat us in London. They knocked me out in the semi-final so it’ll be good to get one over on them. You can’t rule out the eastern  countries at the moment either: Hong Kong and China  – they’ve got some fantastic athletes. – Stephen McGuire, Boccia