More than a Game

Fielding teams for the Paralympics is more than just a game to manufacturing giants such as Invacare and Sunrise Medical. It’s a testing ground for features that might well find their way into everyday wheelchairs.

At the 2004 Paralympic Games for athletes with disabilities in Athens, Greece, Team Invacare, a group of 33 athletes, brought home more than 30 medals in such sports as tennis, swimming and wheelchair racing. Sunrise’s Team Quickie.Sopur, made up of 38 athletes from all over the world, garnered 28 medals, including a gold for its Canadian Men’s Basketball team and multiple medals in wheelchair racing.

The team names are a roster of the world’s most elite wheelchair athletes. Just take a look at some of them:

From Invacare: Paralympic gold and bronze medalist in swimming Cheryl Angelelli; five-time Paralympic gold medalist in wheelchair racing Chantal Petitclerc; Paralympic gold medalist in tennis David Wagner; and Paralympian and top-ranked competitive basketball and tennis player Stephen Welch.

From Sunrise: two-time Paralympic gold medal basketball coach Mike Frogley; Paralympic multiple medalist in road racing Scot Hollenbeck; Canada’s No. 1 quad tennis player, and holder of numerous international tennis championships, Sarah Hunter; and Paralympic gold medalist and U.S. Gold Cup Team gold medalist in wheelchair basketball David Kiley.

And those are only some of the titles — and some of the athletes. In addition to the Paralympians, Elyria, Ohio-based Invacare, and Sunrise of Longmont, Colo., sponsor other athletes around the world, sports teams and motivational speakers. But it isn’t just about getting their names in the spotlight. It’s about developing better wheelchairs.

“We use our [athletes’] knowledge and push the leading edge of technology, and it trickles down into our everyday wheelchairs,” says Marilyn Hamilton, senior vice president of global planning for Sunrise.

“Once [a feature] comes into the sports chair, we try to move it into the everyday chair,” says Rick Cooper, manager of consumer marketing at Invacare. For example, he notes, a type of suspension that was used in a mountain bike was incorporated into one of Invacare’s everyday chairs to make it lighter.

“The biggest thing [to come out of sports chairs and into everyday chairs] has been the continual reduction of weight in the frame,” says Welch, who has been an Invacare-sponsored athlete for years. “The lightweight, everyday chairs now are less than 20 pounds. I’m not sure you would see a lot of titanium chairs like you do now if it weren’t for the athletes.”

The athletes work with these manufacturers in two ways: by testing conceptual chairs and also by helping them to develop chairs specifically for their sports and personal use.

“They come up with something conceptual, and I … take it out on the tennis court and give it a workout,” says Welch. “I tell them what is good, what is bad, what is possible.”

Welch says testing the material that goes into a wheelchair is vital. “Anything can look good on paper. But a lot of engineers are not familiar with the rigors [faced by] everyday chairs and also sports chairs,” he says.

Sunrise’s Frogley has been involved from initial design to testing prototypes. The coach of men’s and women’s wheelchair basketball at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Frogley says his teams used a prototype of a new all-court chair last summer. Their job, he says, was to assess whether the chair “needed to be braced differently, how it was turning, how [it stood] up to practice two times a day.”

Paralympians often work with manufacturers some years out from the Games to develop chairs that will help them to better compete. “They’ll have some equipment that’s inferior or doesn’t fit them right or doesn’t work correctly, and we try to find a better way to do it and make it lighter and stronger,” says Chris Peterson, manager of product development for Invacare Top End.

“We use our athletes to develop product at the very high end of the marketplace,” says Hamilton. “As athletes continue to grow and perform, they need new and better technology. The stresses today on basketball chairs are amazingly different from what they were 10 years ago, or even four years ago.”

Cooper says everyone — athletes and everyday chair-users — looks for the same thing: lightness. “The lighter the better,” he says. “And the more rigid a chair is, the more it moves with you. There’s no giving and flexing where the nuts and bolts are. The chair becomes more like you.”

So the constant mission of manufacturers is to reduce weight and the number of moving parts. Over the years, that search has resulted in a variety of enhancements for the everyday chair. Welch notes the use of the straight-bar axle, which made its way not only into his chair, but the chairs of many others. Peterson cites the positioning of the wheels and the use of the wedge-shaped cushion that places the knees higher than the rear, while Welch says the anti-tip bars that athletes first started using to keep from falling out are seen on a lot of wheelchairs now.

Frogley has been amazed at how developments in sports chairs have made his everyday chair better. “I think a lot of the durability that is in this chair came from the durability required by the players on the basketball court.

“I wanted something that was light,” he continues. “I am hopping in and out of my car every day, all day. I didn’t want [a chair] that was going to make that a cumbersome process. Lightness [gives] players an edge of speed and quickness; it became an issue of transportability and independence for everyday use.”

With another Paralympic Games ahead in 2008, the work of wheelchair athletes and manufacturers continues. New basketball chairs, handcycling chairs, tennis chairs — all are in the pipeline. But in the end, it’s end-users who determine whether or not the chairs work.

“The single most important thing is the position of the person in the chair,” says Peterson. “You can have the world’s nicest wheelchair, but if it doesn’t fit, it’s no good.”