PARIS: Australian Paralympic champion Madison de Rozario has hit back at criticism of Formula 1 technology in wheelchair racing, which has led to some athletes competing in $50,000 chairs as others struggle along in $10,000 chairs.
De Rozario says inhibiting growth in a Paralympic sport is “incredibly problematic” and admits the thought of it “kills me a little bit”.
Wide World of Sports ran a story on Formula 1’s divisive shake-up of wheelchair racing ahead of last year’s New York City Marathon, in which a host of knowledgeable sources, including Australian Paralympic wheelchair racers, a sports engineer and the London Marathon boss, argued for or against the innovation.
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Technicians at Sauber, a Formula 1 team operating as Kick Sauber, has created a phenomenal chair in Switzerland called the OT FOXX.
Honda, on the other hand, which is the engine supplier for Formula 1 teams Red Bull and RB, has developed a remarkable chair in Tokyo called the Kakeru Flagship.
Both chairs are fully carbon and supremely dynamic.
“That’s the crazy thing about our sport, that disparity,” Australian Paralympian Eliza Stankovic-Mowle told Wide World of Sports last year.
Another Australian Paralympian, Jake Lappin, also hit out.
“It just feels like people are getting gains because they have way more money and way more support from different companies that want to invest in athletics,” Lappin told WWOS.
De Rozario, who races in Sauber’s OT FOXX, put forward a passionate defence when asked about the technological divide.
“Trying to stunt progress in a Paralympic sport I find to be incredibly problematic,” de Rozario told WWOS.
“We’ve had BMW build race chairs, we’ve had Honda build race chairs and now we’re seeing Sauber build race chairs. We’ve never seen that in Paralympic sport, we’ve never seen enormous companies buying in and investing in Paralympic sport in this way before.
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“Yes, it creates a divide for the time when the investment is just beginning.
“If we let this run its course we’re going to see an entire Paralympic field that is in the same equipment by multiple companies, and if you have a Paralympic marathon circuit that has that much third-party investment and that much financial investment in our sport — we haven’t seen that before and that’s what sport is.
“The thought of putting a ceiling on that kills me a little bit.
“Investment in technology in a sport that otherwise doesn’t have the same investment as the big-ticket sports is so positive and it’s so good and you want to encourage that as much as possible.”
De Rozario won gold in the T53 800m and T54 marathon at the Tokyo Paralympics in 2021, but the West Australian hadn’t yet linked with Sauber.
The Paralympic icon won last year’s London Marathon in her OT FOXX and is racing with the chair in Paris.
On the streets of the French capital on Sunday, the 30-year-old will be out to defend her Paralympic marathon gold medal.
Among the women racing in either the OT FOXX or the Kakeru Flagship chairs are de Rozario, Switzerland’s Catherine Debrunner and Manuela Schar, and Americans Susannah Scaroni and Tatyana McFadden.
There’s only a finite number of athletes who can afford the chair, or who have the marketability to be able to team up with either Sauber or Honda.
Ahead of the Tokyo Games, Sauber combined forces with Swiss Side, a company that supplies cycling technology, and Orthotec, a subsidiary specialising in medical aids, with one mission: to design the fastest wheelchair in history and catapult Switzerland’s Marcel Hug to glory in Japan.
He won gold in the T54 800m, 1500m, 5000m and marathon, and has had vast success in the years since.
He’s been beaten to gold on three occasions at the Paris Games, but is favoured to triumph in the marathon on Sunday.
Honda and Yachiyo, a manufacturing company that produces products such as sunroofs and fuel tanks, came together to make their own masterpiece.
At the same time that wheelchair racing technology has been debated, so too have “super shoes” in the running world, especially regarding their impact on times in the marathon.
“I think there’s been a resistance to the development of technology because of wanting the technology to not be the factor in deciding who is a better athlete on the day because that’s just not how running works — but that is how wheelchair racing works,” said de Rozario, who won 5000m bronze in Paris last week.
“We see people lose races because of flat tyres and a large part of that is the athlete maintaining their equipment in a way that allows them to go for an entire 42 kilometres … The sport is leaning into technology because that’s what our sport is; our sport does have equipment in it and that means you want that to be as advanced as possible. That’s what we want; we want to see sport continually improving.”
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