Wheelchair athletes
Med Services Europe has recently published a free web collection of "Cool Wheelchair Sports Videos". The project is meant to be a Video Celebration of Wheelchair Athletes and has been created to help raise awareness of wheelchair sports in the eyes of the public as well as the media.
"While the media celebrates the abilities of sports legends such as Kobe Bryant and Michael Schumacher, media attention to wheelchair athletes is minimal. Most sports writers can not name more than a few wheelchair athletes", says Dr Gene Emmer. "The media is simply not giving wheelchair sports the coverage that they deserve."
The wheelchair sports video collection is an ongoing project. It is hoped that this will become the largest collection of wheelchair sports videos on the internet and that it will serve as a resource for journalists in the future.
Currently the collection provides an external link to the original source of the video (for copyright reasons). This means the videos may play in different formats. However, the collection is exciting as it demonstrates the variety and skill of wheelchair athletes.
"Already there is a wide-range of videos representing a cross section of wheelchair sports and some exceptionally talented wheelchair athletes, including wheelchair tennis player Ester Vergeer, wheelchair basketball player Ade Adeptan, murderball player Mark Zupan and the young wheelchair skateboarder Aaron Fotheringham"
The growing list of wheelchair sports includes everything from wheelchair football, hockey and soccer to others, such as wheelchair paragliding, wheelchair dancing, wheelchair fencing and wheelchair curling.
If you have or know of a cool sports wheelchair video Med Services would be happy to hear from you, and are looking for suggestions to expand the resource.
More information and contact details are available on the Med Services Europe web site.