Sportsmen with disabilities. Athletes left disabled after injuries. Reference. There are no unsolvable problems

Russian Roman Petushkov is a five-time world champion in cross-country skiing and biathlon for persons with a musculoskeletal disorder in 2013.

Multiple winner of the World Cup stages, silver and bronze medalist of the Paralympic Games, twice the best athlete in the world according to the International Paralympic Committee.

Mikhalina Lysova- Honored Master of Sports of Russia, Paralympic relay champion in cross-country skiing and bronze medalist in the biathlon pursuit among visually impaired athletes at the 2010 Winter Paralympic Games in Vancouver. According to her, she became interested in sports as a child, in her native Nizhny Tagil, and did not even dream of such great achievements in the future.

A native of the Bashkir village of Kayrakovo Kirill Mikhailov actively involved in sports in 1993. Kirill is the Honored Master of Sports of Russia in cross-country skiing, as well as the Athlete of the Year according to GQ. Married, the couple has two sons - Daniel and Kornil. Kirill Mikhailov showed by his own example that sport is destiny. He dreamed of making a sports career and showed a good result, but a serious injury in an accident put an end to his hopes for medals in big-time sports. However, Cyril was able to gather his will into a fist and decided

Paralympic relay champion in cross-country skiing and silver medal winner in the biathlon pursuit among visually impaired athletes at the 2010 Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver Lyubov Vasilyeva- Honored Master of Sports of Russia. From childhood, Vasilyeva was surrounded by sports - while working with healthy children, Lyuba skied, ran and danced. No matter how hard it was, she always strived to be the first. Love was successful not only in sports, but also in art - she painted very well.

Two-time Paralympic champion and silver medalist at the 2010 Winter Paralympics in Vancouver Maria Iovleva Started skiing at the age of 10. Currently, Maria is in the status of an Honored Master of Sports and is preparing for competitions at the Paralympic Games in Sochi.

Prize-winner of the 10th Winter Paralympic Games Anna Burmistrova- Winner of 5 gold awards, as well as 4 silver. In March 2010, she was awarded the Order of Honor for her great contribution to the development of physical culture and sports, as well as for high achievements at the 10th Paralympic Winter Games in 2010. According to Anna, she started playing sports at the age of 6. At first, her mother gave her to swim for general development (Anna has bilateral plexitis, Erb's paralysis (partial immobility of the arm caused by a brachial plexus injury during childbirth). The doctors unanimously told the athlete that it was impossible to train, but the girl's mother insisted. Already at the age of 14, Anna Burmistrova got into the national team and performed at the international level.

Skier Irek Zaripov- champion in cross-country skiing and biathlon. Irek lost his legs in 2000 after being hit by a truck on a motorcycle. Two years after that, he lived, according to him, like a plant, not understanding why he was needed in this world. It was only thanks to the sport, which his parents convinced him to go, that he regained the ability to enjoy life. To get back in shape, Irek began to train hard. As a result - 4 gold medals at the 2010 games in Vancouver. Irek dedicates his victories in Vancouver to everyone, as he himself said: "who contributed to my development, who rooted for me - these are my parents, and my wife, and my son."

Alexandra Frantseva- Champion of Russia in alpine skiing, winner of the European Cup stages, participant in the Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver. Alexander was born on April 24, 1987 in the Kamchatka Territory. Performs in the category of visually impaired athletes. In 2013, at the final stage of the IPC World Cup 2013 in alpine skiing, she won gold in speed disciplines and won the title of absolute winner of the World Cup in her category. Alexandra Frantseva - “She has been her champion of Sochi 2014 since 2012, she represents the Far Eastern Federal District in the project. The athlete plans to take part in the Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi.

Unfortunately, I agree with this opinion. Following the example of Lipetsk - not the worst and callous regional city in Russia - I will say that the society of the problems of the disabled prefers to simply ignore it. And the representatives of the authorities, by and large, are the same products of society. litmus paper, so to speak ...
Original taken from alexzgr1970 c Athletes are not disabled, society is disabled

After their triumph in London, Russian Paralympic athletes return to a society that considers them inferior. One thing that Russian athletes with physical disabilities who successfully performed at the just completed Summer Paralympic Games in London will definitely never forget is the crowded stands, passionately empathizing with everything that happened in the arenas.

“My head is spinning with excitement,” three-time Paralympic champion Yevgeny Shvetsov admitted to me, with difficulty pronouncing the words (consequences of cerebral palsy), after he won the hundred-meter race and, with a flag in his hands, ran another lap of honor to a flurry of applause. “I never imagined that I would experience such happiness. This is something transcendent, unreal, fantastic for us. This does not happen in our country.

I am sure that many Russian sports fans who watched the events of the Summer Olympic Games preceding the Paralympics, at least saw on TV how, to the roar of 80,000 fans, the incomparable sprinter from Jamaica, Usain Bolt, won the 100-meter race. But if our same spectators - and why hide it, most of them simply didn’t keep it in their thoughts - wanted to see how, under the roar of the same 80,000-strong audience, Margarita Goncharova, the first three-time Paralympic champion, who had left-sided cerebral palsy, ran to the finish line , or the flag-bearer of the Russian team Aleksey Ashapatov, who does not have one leg, sent the disc and the shot farthest of all, then ... they could not do this.

Didn't show!

And look, believe the eyewitness, there was something. Ever since the school, where track and field disciplines were held, everyone roughly imagines how they push the core - a matter of seconds. In general, Alexei Ashapatov also took only a few seconds directly to push, but the preparation for it took about five minutes, no less. At first, the judges in the circle for a long time, as the athlete needed, set up a high, strong chair, fixing it on struts from all sides so that it would not move. Alexey approached the chair, took off the prosthesis, adjusted himself to the seat, took a metal ball in his right hand, rested one foot on the floor and launched a projectile for the world record mark - more than 16 meters. Incredibly far! Yes, even from such an uncomfortable position.

Ashapatov was loved in London. Yes, and it was impossible to have a different attitude towards the most charming giant, two meters tall, personifying Russian heroic power. The kindest person, he never refused autographs to anyone. The gait is like that of a real Russian bear, waddling. Anyone who has not seen him at the stadium will not think that he does not have one leg. English journalists compared him in popularity with Usain Bolt. To which Alexei replied: “What kind of star am I? An ordinary humble person. God gave HEALTH, and we must use it to the fullest. What I do to the best of my ability and do for the good of the Motherland!

At the same time, Alexei does not like to talk about the difficult path he went to his triumph. Ashapatov lost his leg as a result of a stab wound he received at a friend's wedding. Doctors were unable to provide timely assistance. Gangrene set in and the limb had to be amputated. When he woke up after the operation from anesthesia and found out that he had no leg, he experienced an insane shock, did not know how to live on. But the athlete did not despair. Doctors said that he needed a year of rehabilitation, and a month after being discharged from the hospital, he participated in arm wrestling competitions. In this sport, he became the silver medalist of the world championships in South Africa and Japan. Then Alexei tried his hand at swimming, table tennis, and sitting volleyball. But he found his true calling in athletics, where he became a four-time Paralympic champion.

When I talked about how Aleksey Ashapatov competed, how Paralympic champion Olesya Vladykina swam with one hand best of all on the planet, how one of the foreign athletes accurately shot from a bow with the help of two legs, how athletes competed in the final 100-meter race - all without exception - did not have both legs, and they ran on special prostheses, most male friends, without saying a word, exclaimed: “What a horror! I wouldn't be able to watch it all." Women had a slightly different reaction: “If I saw all this, I would burst into tears of compassion.”

And they sobbed. What is there to hide. I saw tears in the eyes of our few fans, who with great difficulty - tickets were in great short supply - broke into the London arenas.

This is how, at best, we express our attitude towards people who are usually called disabled in Russia. And the British... They didn't cry. They admired the heroes of the Paralympic sport. They hailed them as outstanding sporting personalities of our time. I emphasize especially - personalities who are equal to themselves in everything!

And the foreign Paralympic athletes themselves treat themselves as quite normal, ordinary people. Unlike ours, who, alas, for the most part consider themselves disabled. In support of this conclusion, I will cite the phrase often quoted in foreign media, as it is now customary to say, the hitmaker of world Paralympic sports, the multiple Paralympic champion of the legless South African Oscar Pistorius: “I am not disabled, I just have no legs.” And, revealing the essence of what was said, after adding: “The only difference from my brother and sister for me since childhood was that my mother, collecting us to school, put on shoes for me that did not look like the rest.”

Just think about this phrase and you will understand a lot. And understand to yourself that the point is not what you have, but how you can manage it all, how you feel in your family, in your city, and finally, in your native society.

The British society reacted with great attention to the starts of the Paralympic athletes. This was evidenced not only by the overcrowded stands, where the fans settled down with their whole families, having bought tickets worth from 10 to 50 pounds sterling (from 500 to 3000 rubles with our money). The ratings of TV programs were also striking indicators, which went off scale for cosmic marks. The television audience of the 2012 Paralympic Games was estimated at 4 billion viewers (I think there were several tens of thousands of Russians there at best). In the UK, there was even a tender to show the competition, and the fight against the BBC was won by Channel4, which took 150 hours of live broadcast of the competitions daily. For the first time in history, the organizers of the Paralympics profited from the sale of television rights. Of course, 16 million dollars is incomparable with the billions that go to the International Olympic Committee, but the process has moved off the ground.

In our country, the events of the Paralympics were shown on public channels by Rossiya-2, at first in the format of diaries. But the hand will not be raised to accuse TV executives of inattention to Paralympic sports - they, apparently, were guided by the same notorious rating, which is really extremely low in Russia. Then, however, when the success of the Russian Paralympic athletes began to grow by leaps and bounds (which, I think, did not affect the ratings in any way, but affected the mood of those in power in the Kremlin, who ordered to expand broadcasts), live broadcasts began to appear. But what did it give?

Alas, our society is not yet accustomed to truly GROWING for people who are not like the majority - without arms, without legs, blind, deaf, deaf and dumb, partially paralyzed, downs. Let's admit to ourselves: today they are strangers to us. And when they become relatives, I can’t say.

One of the Russian Paralympic champions, who asked not to be named, frankly told me that he had never felt at home as comfortable as in the UK: “We are different in our homeland, not like everyone else, well, perhaps, people of the second varieties. As if they are miserable! Well, in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sochi, in those cities that are in full view of the whole world, they are still somehow trying to solve our problems, but outside the capitals, in the regions in which I live, it’s better not to apply for support - that’s all still won't help! Something, however, shifts for the better after the next Paralympic Games, and then again silence and complete stagnation. We are needed only when we win, and then they will forget about us again. If we lose, then perhaps forever.

Is this really going to happen after the grandiose, I'm not afraid to say this word, triumph of Russian athletes at the Summer Paralympic Games in London? I really do not want to believe in this in an atmosphere of victorious euphoria. But, apparently, it will be so. And from the realization of this, I feel somehow uncomfortable.

Vladimir Salivon

Sports can be practiced not only by a healthy person, but also by those with physical limitations. And a vivid example of this is the well-known Paralympic athletes of Russia. These people are not only the pride of their country, but also a source of inspiration for those who have health problems and do not know how to live with this or that flaw. These athletes go to their victories not because of something, but in spite of everything.

They have a very difficult time - much more difficult than others. But willpower, patience, perseverance and the desire to realize themselves help them to stick to the chosen path and reach unimaginable heights. So, we have before us the real heroes - the Paralympic athletes of Russia, glorifying the country to the whole world.

Olesya Vladykina

A native Muscovite, Olesya, was born healthy and, while still quite a baby, began to swim. Showed great promise, became a master of sports. But after graduation, she decided to choose another profession and entered the university. And then disaster struck.

In 2008, twenty-year-old Olesya Vladykina was vacationing in Thailand, where she got into a terrible accident. Her friend died on the spot, and the future sports star lost her arm. It is amazing that this event did not lower Olesya into the abyss of depression, but became an impetus on the way up.

Vladykina decided to return to the sport and again seriously took up swimming. Just six months later, she was sent as part of the Russian team to the Paralympics in Beijing. And Olesya took the "gold", becoming the winner in the 100-meter breaststroke swim. And at the Paralympic Games in London, Vladykina set a world record. And again became "golden".

Alexey Bugaev

Among the famous Paralympic athletes of Russia is Alexei Bugaev, who is one of the youngest. The guy was barely 20 years old, and he is already the owner of the gold medal that he got at the Games in Sochi. Lesha is a skier. Born in Krasnoyarsk. In the very first minutes of his life, doctors discovered a congenital anomaly of the right hand in him.

The parents wanted their boy to live like all people. They did everything possible to adapt their son in society. One way is sports. Alexey has been doing it since the age of six. And already at 14 he was included in the Paralympic team of the country. And the guy justified the trust!

Oksana Savchenko

Disabled Paralympic athletes of Russia know and respect their colleague Oksana Savchenko, who has several state awards. She also has health problems. True, no one immediately noticed deviations, and when the baby was a few months old, her parents drew attention to her too large pupils. Then it turned out that Oksana had congenital glaucoma.

The operation slowed down the development of the disease, but at that time the right eye was already completely blind, and the left one saw very poorly. Oksana has this situation to this day, but at the same time she is a well-known athlete - one of the outstanding Russian Paralympic athletes.

The girl has been swimming since childhood. Her mother took her to the section, apparently feeling that her daughter was capable of much. And this, indeed, turned out to be the case. In Beijing, Oksana won three golds, and in London - as many as five. She has two higher educations, and she is not going to stop there!

Irek Zaripov

Having got into an accident, Irek Zaripov lost both legs. This happened in 2000, and for a long time the guy did not know how to live on. He spent two years in a deep depression, considering himself a plant, no longer good for anything. But Irek's parents did not give up and fought for their son. They persuaded him to take up sports. And it brought the guy back to life.

Hard training has not been in vain. Zaripov is well known to Russian Paralympic athletes and fans, because he is a multiple champion. He won four gold medals in cross-country skiing and biathlon at the Paralympic Games in Vancouver. For a legless person, this is a grand achievement. And it would not have been possible without the support of loved ones. Irek Zaripov repeatedly expressed gratitude for her to his parents, wife and son, to whom the athlete dedicates his victories.

Of course, these are not all the most famous Paralympic athletes in Russia. Their list is much longer. But even the above four stories show that there are no unattainable heights in this world, and people with limited physical abilities have no limits in their abilities!

Professional athletes are always at risk of serious injuries that can leave them disabled for the rest of their lives or even kill them. A few examples of such cases that broke the lives of famous athletes are waiting for you further. Attention, this post contains pictures that we do not recommend viewing for too impressionable people.

Elena Mukhina. The gymnast, the leader of the USSR national team, was predicted to be the champion of the Moscow Olympics, but a terrible injury received a few weeks before the competition in training radically changed her life.

Elena's coach was Mikhail Klimenko. He began to train her from the age of 14, before that he worked only with men, and decided that a specially created complex program should become her “chip”.

Three years later, Elena became the second in the all-around at the USSR Championship and won three gold medals at the European Championship. The following year, she won the overall standings of the national championship and won three gold medals at the world championship in Strasbourg.

The first serious injury overtook her in 1975 during the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR in Leningrad. The detachment of the spinous processes of the cervical vertebrae was the result of an unsuccessful landing. Mukhina was admitted to the hospital: the athlete could not turn her neck.

But every day, after a medical round, Klimenko took the gymnast to the gym, where he removed the orthopedic collar so that Lena would train there until the evening. Even then, the athlete felt how her legs began to go numb; She recognized the feeling of weakness that later became familiar to her.

Despite this, the athlete did not give up the performance, and at demonstration performances in the fall of 1979 in England she broke her leg. She spent a month and a half in a cast, after which it turned out that the bones had parted.

The cast was put on again, but the coach did not wait for recovery and sent Mukhina to train in the gym on one healthy leg.

Complicating Mukhina's program on the eve of the Olympic Games, Klimenko included a new element in floor exercises: after a flask and the most difficult jump (one and a half somersaults with a 540-degree turn), the landing was to take place head down into a somersault.

This element was called "Thomas somersault" and was taken from men's gymnastics. Mukhina recalled that she repeatedly told the coach that she lacked speed and height, and she literally risked breaking her neck. Klimenko, on the other hand, believed that the new element was not dangerous.

“I saw my fall several times in a dream,” Mukhina recalled. “I saw how they carried me out of the hall. I understood that sooner or later this would really happen. I felt like an animal being driven with a whip along an endless corridor. But again and again I came to the hall. Probably, this is fate. But they are not offended by fate. "

It is believed that Klimenko, when leaving, forbade Mukhina to independently train Thomas somersaults on the platform, only in a foam pit, however, the girl nevertheless decided to complete the program in full, including a new element.

“On that day, Lena didn’t feel well, but the coach insisted that she do a run, show the entire program with maximum difficulty in floor exercises,” said former gymnast Lidia Ivanova. “In one of the difficult jumps, when Lena had already gone into the air and started twist, she either relaxed, or let her injured ankle down: Mukhina did not twist and hit the carpet with all her might.

In Minsk, for some reason, they could not operate on the gymnast immediately after her fall, although immediate surgical intervention could greatly alleviate Mukhina's situation, she was transported to Moscow.

After the first operation, others followed, but they did not bring visible results. The gymnast remained almost completely paralyzed: she could not stand, sit, and even simply eat.

“After all these countless operations, I decided that if I want to live, then I need to run away from hospitals. Then I realized that I need to radically change my attitude to life. Do not envy others, but learn to enjoy what is available to me. I realized that the commandments “do not think badly”, “do not act badly”, “do not envy” are not just words,” Elena said.

The gymnast could not forget her coach, who remained in her memory closely associated with the nightmare of the past. When the athlete learned that Klimenko, who had left for Italy with his family shortly after the tragedy, returned to Moscow, her condition deteriorated sharply. Mukhina categorically refused to meet with him.

Clint Malarchuk. On March 22, 1989, the Buffalo Sabers goaltender was standing in goal as usual during a game with the St. Louis Blues when Steve Tuttle and Uwe Krupp flew into him, colliding a second earlier.

Tuttle accidentally injured Malarchuk's jugular vein with a skate blade: a fountain of blood poured onto the ice, plunging the stadium into a state of shock.

Many of Malarchuk's teammates vomited, and the audience began to faint. In a few seconds, the hockey player lost almost a liter of blood, and then lost the same amount on the way to the hospital,

Physiotherapist Jim Pizzutelli was able to stop the bleeding by squeezing a vein and handing the hockey player over to the doctors. Surgeons managed to save Clint's life by giving him over 300 stitches.

After an injury, Clint Malarchuk left his sports career and became a children's coach, but he experienced terrible psychological problems and tried to commit suicide twice, but miraculously he managed to survive after clinical death resulting from poisoning and get rid of a couple of scars after trying to shoot himself.

Roni Keller. The incident happened in 2013. Opponent player Stefan Schnyder pushed Keller, causing him to fly headfirst into the side at high speed.

The resulting spinal injury was fatal.

Roni not only could not return to his sports career, he was forever paralyzed. In one day, his sports future and carefree life were crossed out.

Stefan Schnider was very worried about his guilt and even turned to a psychologist. In honor of Keller, his number 23 sweater hung on the bench for the rest of the Swiss Championship games.

Julissa Gomez. An American gymnast suffered a terrible injury during a vault in 1988: at a competition in Japan, she slipped on a springboard and crashed her head into a vault horse.

Julissa was completely paralyzed, her life was supported by resuscitation equipment.

A few days later, another misfortune happened in the hospital where the gymnast was taken: due to a technical malfunction, the artificial respiration apparatus to which Gomez was connected stopped working.

This led to serious brain disorders and a catatonic state. Julissa's family took care of her for three years. In 1991, in Houston, she died of an infectious disease at the age of 18.

Brian Clough. On December 26, 1962, the defender of the Bury club, Chris Harker, at full speed, crashed his shoulder into the knee of a football player, as a result of which he received a rupture of the cruciate ligaments - at that time there was no worse injury.

“Almost for the first time in my life I lost my balance and hit my head on the ground,” Brian later recalled what happened. I tried to get up, but I couldn't...

Clough nevertheless returned to the field in September 1964 in a match against Leeds and scored a goal in the first meeting. But he was only enough for three games, after which he decided to leave, became a coach, but at the same time suffered from alcoholism.

Billy Collins Jr. The 21-year-old American boxer was a successful and promising athlete. The fight with Luis Resto was supposed to be another passing fight for him on the way to stronger opponents.

Resto seized the initiative from the very beginning of the fight, Billy did not have time to recover from crushing blows, by the end of the fight he turned into a continuous bloody edema.

The victory was awarded to Resto (pictured), but Collins' father and part-time coach pointed out to the judges that the opponent's gloves were too thin, and demanded to re-check them.

To their horror, before the fight, the soft filler was deliberately removed from the front of Resto's gloves, and the boxing bandages were pre-soaked in a plaster solution: the effect of the blows that Collins missed was comparable to the blows of stones.

Luis Resto (pictured) and his coach went on trial for this act and subsequently went to jail. Collins, on the other hand, received serious facial injuries, primarily the eyes - a rupture of the iris and a fracture of the orbit.

This led to a significant deterioration in vision, and he was unable to return to professional boxing. The injury also affected the mental state of the athlete - he began to drink. Less than a year after the high-profile fight, Collins died in a car accident.

Sergey Pogiba. The winner of the World Cup in sports acrobatics in 1992, during the warm-up of the national championship, tried to perform the second exercise.

The athlete went to the screw-screw, but lost his orientation in the air and landed on his head instead of his legs. The ambulance immediately took him away.

Doctors made a terrible diagnosis - a fracture of the sixth cervical vertebra. It took a long time to recover after that. Sergei Pogiba was paralyzed, his lower body remains motionless.

Ronnie Zismer. On July 15, 2004, a misfortune happened to a German gymnast who claimed the medals of the 2004 Olympics: during training, the athlete fell and also injured his cervical vertebra.

As a result, the arms and legs of the gymnast were paralyzed. The accident happened while doing floor exercises when Ronnie was doing a double somersault.

In one of the best medical centers in Berlin, they made a disappointing diagnosis: according to the chief physician of the clinic, Walter Szafartsik, "most likely Ronnie will never be able to move his paralyzed arms and legs."

Doctors' predictions came true - Ronnie Zismer is still confined to a wheelchair, but his hands are not paralyzed and he fights for every millimeter of movement.

Cases when athletes, after an injury received in training or competition, became disabled, unfortunately, are not rare.

Contact team games, such as football, hockey, rugby, basketball, volleyball, handball, are leading in the list of the most traumatic sports. This list has recently included gymnastics.

The famous gymnast, absolute world champion, 20-year-old Elena Mukhina, on July 3, 1980, 16 days before the opening of the Moscow Olympics, received a severe injury in training - a fracture of the cervical spine and remained forever chained to a wheelchair. She passed away in December 2006.

In 1992, during the National Championship in sports acrobatics, World Cup winner Sergei Pogiba tried to perform the exercise during the warm-up, but lost his bearings in the air and landed on his head instead of his legs. Sergei Pogiba was paralyzed, his lower body remains motionless.

Footballer Yuri Tishkov (Dynamo Moscow) was seriously injured on July 5, 1993. At the 13th minute of the match of the 1/16 finals of the Russian Cup in Kolomna, the player of the local "Viktor-Avant-garde" Bodak, trying to make a tackle, crashed with two feet from behind into the forward of "Dynamo" Yuri Tishkov. A fracture of the tibia actually put an end to the career of a talented striker.

At the end of his career, he worked as a television commentator on TVC and Rossiya channels. He was a coach at the Torpedo-ZIL Sports School named after Valery Voronin. He headed the guild of sports journalists "Media Union". Tragically died on January 11, 2003.

The famous Romanian gymnast, champion of the Atlanta Olympics, Alexandra Marinescu, injured her spine in training in 1997 and was forced to leave the sport at the age of 15. To avoid complete paralysis, she underwent three major operations and remained disabled for life.

On July 21, 1998, 17-year-old Chinese gymnast San Lan was injured during the warm-up before the competition during the Goodwill Games in New York. In the vault, she extremely unsuccessfully pushed off the projectile and, having lost her landmark, fell headlong onto the mats. The seven-hour operation, as in the case of Elena Mukhina, having stabilized the athlete's condition, could not restore her motor functions.

On September 15, 2001, Alessandro Zanardi, a famous Italian racing driver who competed in the Formula 1 series, got into a severe accident. In a race at the Lausitzring in Germany, one of the first European rounds in Champ Car history, Zanardi lost control and his Reynard spun across the track. The next second, Canadian Alex Tagliani's car crashed into him. The Italian's car was cut in half, and he lost both legs up to the knee.

Doctors made Zanardi prosthetic legs, on which he was able to walk. After completing a rehabilitation program, Zanardi returned to racing using specially equipped manual cars.

One of the most promising gymnasts in Russia, the silver medalist of the World Championship in the team Maria Zasypkina in November 2001, while training at the Lake Krugloye base near Moscow, received a severe injury, as a result of which she became paralyzed.
Later, Maria Zasypkina graduated from the Institute of Physical Education, worked as a teacher in a dance studio, and now she has become a coach at her own gymnastic school.

German gymnast Johan Hablik broke his cervical vertebra in November 2002 as a result of a fall and since then his left arm has been paralyzed.

One of the leaders of the German national gymnastics team, Ronnie Zismer, was injured in July 2004 while preparing for the upcoming Olympic Games. Performing floor exercises, he did his signature element - a double somersault - and landed right on his head. As a result, the athlete received a fracture of the cervical vertebra and serious damage to the spine. Ronnie has only facial muscles, and the entire body below the neck is completely paralyzed.