Winter Games

Winter Games NZ August 21st to 30th
The winter games organisers were kind enough to let DRCQ watch the Super G adaptive race on Tuesday 25th August. The race was due to start early that morning but was postponed due to adverse weather conditions so the competitors, support teams, family, friends and others waited and we waited. The German team arrived straight from Christchurch after flying into New Zealand. They came up the mountain and waited in anticipation with all the rest of us, eager for the race to begin. Lunch time came and the hard working Coronet staff were busy assessing the conditions. It was decided to wait a little longer.

As we waited there was chance to speak to some of the competitor’s. Mark Soyer from Australia and Teague Couley from the United States were kind enough to tell us a bit about themselves. Mark a paraplegic has been competing in adaptive snow sports for three years and Teague, a veteran by comparison, for 17 years only has one arm and one leg. To date neither have won any events for their countries but to get to this level of competition is a feat in itself. There are many disabled athletes, the world over, striving to represent their nations. To have the chance to travel the world, doing the sport they love, meeting different people and experiencing different cultures. It could be thought that the biggest achievement of these young men is that they have not just overcome their disability but actually utilised them, to excel in adaptive snow sports.

DRCQ would like to congratulate all disabled competitors at the winter games for using the ‘disability’ to define their ‘Abilities’ in adaptive snow sports. These young men and women can be an inspiration to disabled people everywhere. They have found something that is fun and challenging, that they can be passionate about in which they excel.

Everyone that was spoken to, was highly complimentary about Queenstown and the Lakes District, most simply defined our area as “Awesome”. Some of the other responses are as follows:

“The adventure activities are great but sometimes access to them for the disabled is poor.”

“Coronet has great medical facilities but we couldn’t see any disabled parking spaces.”

“The public bus service is really good for access. The drivers were nice and always lowered the bus to help us on.”

Unfortunately the Super G adaptive race was eventually cancelled for the day due to the weather. It was still a great day. We look forward to the possibility of welcoming back the Winter Games in future years.