Wheelchair racing is by far the most renouned disabled sports event on Track 'n Field in the World. I think the two biggest reasons are a huge amount of athletes doing it, and its great suitability for interation with able-bodied people and for TV broadcasting.

On this page I want to give you some information about the classification system and the equipment in this great sports.

There are four main gategories for classification on Track 'n Field:

  • T1 for blind and visually impaired
  • T3 for people with carebral palsy (such as me)
  • T4 for amputees
  • T5 for people with spinal cord injuries (such as spina fibida)

In the main gategories, athletes are classified in the sub-classes according the severity of the disability. For example, a CP athlete using a manual wheelchair, with no (or minimal) disability on the upper limbs and with normal muscle strength, should compete in class T34. And a person with a spinal cord injury that doesn't effect on the trunk and abdomin, should belong to the class T54. If you compared classes T34 and T54 resultwise, the T34 racer would be about 2,5 seconds slower on a 100m race. The differece on the maximum speeds could vary from five to even ten kilometers per hour, in faver of the T54 racer.

Those were examples of the "most healthy" wheelchair classes. A person with a more severe CP will be competind in classes T31-T33, and a person with a more severe spinal cord injury is classified for classes T51-T53.

There are exceptions in some cases on the classification, because every class isn't allowed to compete in every competition. In that case, an athlete can compete in "higher" classification that he/she is classified to. For example, in the most international races I'm racing in class T53, since the CP classes have so few athletes nowadays.

For racing on a top level, you will absolutely need a special racing wheelchair, which should allways be custom-built for each athlete. The price is about 5000 euros and above.

The chair is usually about two meters long, and it has three wheels on it. The front wheel is usually about 20 inches in diameter, and the rear wheels 28 inches. The pushrims in the rear wheels are a lot smaller than in the every-day chairs. For instance, I'm using rims that are about 13 inches in diameter.

The wheels can be regular spoke wheels, or made of carbon fibre. There are many kinds of carbon fibre wheels, for example disc wheels. I'm using carbon fibre wheels that has four carbon fibre spokes.

The tires are regular sports bike tires, mostly tubes, and in the track use they are usually 125-180 grams in weight. In road competitions we might use heavier and wider tires.

In wheelchair racing you will also need racing gloves. They can be custom or factory made gloves or mitts. The price on the factory made ones is about 150€ a pair.