In Beijing and Tokyo, I documented athletes from around the globe coming together to participate in the greatest of athletic competitions. Their backgrounds are as diverse as the countries and cultures they come from. To be eligible to compete in the Paralympic Games, an athlete must have at least one of 10 physical or intellectual impairments.
Some were born with these conditions, while others acquired them through disease or accident. But what they all have in common is the superior athletic ability and the drive to put themselves in front of the world at the Paralympics. In other words, it was not only their physical prowess but the mental fortitude that got them there.
On February 24, four days after the end of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and a week before the start of the Paralympics, Russian President Vladimir Putin began his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As a result, the dynamics completely changed for all those involved in the Games in China's capital. Initially, International Paralympics Committee President Andrew Parsons announced that the Paralympians from Russia and Belarus would be allowed to compete in the upcoming Paralympics. There was so much protest from the other national teams –threatening to go home or not compete against or alongside the athletes from the Russian Olympic Committee or Belarus - that the initial decision was reversed.
As a result, I decided to adjust my focus and document as part of my coverage the Ukrainian Paralympians with the incredibly heavyweight of a besieged nation upon their shoulders and undoubtedly omnipresent in their minds.
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