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NCHPAD - Building Healthy Inclusive Communities

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Slalom at the National Veterans Wheelchair Games


In the September 2009 Program Spotlight, we highlighted the 29th Annual National Veterans Wheelchair Games that took place in Spokane, Washington, this past summer. This month, we continue sharing exciting sport footage with video and interviews from the Slalom competition.

To watch this month's featured sport, click on the link below:



 Stay tuned in the following weeks for video clips featuring other sport competitions from the Games.

Video captions are in text format below:

I'm Jeff Delean and I'm from Salem, Oregon. What it is pretty much is like an obstacle course. They set up a little course that you'll go through. You go over ramps and down, simulate curves, stairs, stuff like that. You'll go through cones where it will make you go backwards, if you bump the cones they'll take time off or add time to your score. The object is to obviously get through with the quickest amount of time. For the most part the slalom is just using your balance, your curb knowledge, going up curbs, stairs, stuff like that. It's kind of a hard thing to train for; I know people have tried to do it before but they change it every year, add stuff and take stuff out so its a tough one to train for. This is actually my first time coming and its definitely a great experience. Something I 'm already planning on coming to the Colorado games next year and looking forward to making as many games as I can.

I'm Brent Kin, 38, from Cheney, Washington. The slalom is incorporating in everyday life obstacles, they turn it up quite a bit though. You're going for the fastest time and avoiding penalties like hitting the cones and falling off the obstacles and getting through without them having to catch you. Each time they help you or you need assistance then they deduct more time, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, it just depends on what it is. You have your quadriplegics then they have the paraplegics that are open. It just goes by different areas of paralysis and the height of your injury. Where you can feel from and what muscles work. So class fives over here might be amputees and they can walk, walking paraplegics that can walk a little because they don't use their chairs all the time so they don't expect them to be able to do as hard of obstacles. Everyone is competitive and everyone likes to compete in life at about everything. That's why we have sports and we can't go back and do sports. All the traditional ways, the way the norm is. So this is our little bit of modified way of competing but the difference here is we're all veterans. We pick on each other about Army, Navy. You know, all the different services but when it comes down to it we're all brothers in arms that supported each other so we're doing it again.

My name is Anthony Radetic. I'm from Eufaula, Alabama. I'm in a class four and that's kind of like the intermediate class. They have a masters, guys who are pretty skilled or constantly popping wheelies and stuff like that. I've been injured for five years and just found out about it and I'm pretty well hooked right now so I would come again. I'm kind of amazed that there's something like this. There's a lot of guys that are participating in it and it's kind of nice knowing that there's guys in the same situation as me and we're just out here having fun. I like it; it's good for the soul I guess.


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