I’ve been trying to find out if anybody with MS is taking part in the Paralympics. Does anybody know? Also, I did find that many of the participants are soldiers injured on duty. That makes those ones strong fit people with no underlying disease causing their disability. Pat
Disability is disability regardless of the cause. This is the first Olympics where people with non physical [i.e. learning disabilities] are going to be allowed to take part.
Good on the ex soldiers if they have found some way to continue to participate in some sort of strenuous activity after horrific accidents. I think many of us know how difficult it is just to integrate with ‘normal’ people - being able to compete must help them to remain positive.
Don’t forget that the origins of the paralympics came from work done with soldiers at Stoke Mandeville hospital.
Liz
Interesting question. I went on the BBC website to see if I could find out, but they don’t say anything about who has what. I do know that not everyone is disabled because of injury though - I used to be on the same sports scholorship at Uni as a girl with cerebal palsy who does dressage for GB.
A search for “multiple sclerosis” on the Channel 4 website came up with Stephanie Millward who is competing in the swimming for GB.
I would guess that most people with mild MS aren’t sufficiently disabled to qualify (e.g. the marathon runners amongst us), and those who are disabled enough are too knackered to do the training never mind the competing! I know that if taekwondo had been in the Beijing Paralympics, I could have competed but might not have been eligible because I was very well despite my MS, but I couldn’t do it now 
Karen x
Hi
I posted this to a previous post on the very same question:
Stephanie Millward (GB) is in the 400m Freestyle, 100m Butterfly swimming events as per MS Matters magazine.
I hope that this helps in your search. I do not wish to guess the ‘level’ of disability that Stephanie has.
Neil
Seems to be a problem with this post - it went back to June.
Liz [confused Moderator]