Exploring the Paralympics in Paris with Katie Richmond

What if you could witness the unyielding spirit of the world's most exceptional athletes in action? Join us as we sit down with Katie Richmond, reporting live from the Paris Paralympics, to uncover the stories of resilience and triumph that make this event truly unforgettable. From her touching visit to the historic beaches of Normandy to experiencing the vibrancy of the Paralympics' opening ceremony, Katie takes us through every exhilarating moment, shedding light on the diverse and sold-out medal events that have captivated audiences worldwide.

Explore the intricate world of Paralympic sports with us, where we spotlight categories such as T35 for runners with moderate impairments and the T11 to T13 categories for blind runners. Katie shares her firsthand account witnessing thrilling victories like the US women’s triumph over Italy in sitting volleyball. We also marvel at the audacity and skill of visually impaired long jumpers and an eight-foot-tall Iranian athlete who redefines the boundaries of possibility.

Delve into the technical side of the Paralympics as we discuss the origins, strategies, and intense training behind wheelchair rugby. Katie provides insights into the evolving technologies in prosthetics, highlighting the preferences and challenges faced by athletes. We round off this enlightening episode by looking ahead to the future innovations in 3D printing and prosthetic technology that promise to revolutionize the field. Don’t miss this episode packed with inspiring stories and cutting-edge advancements that showcase the remarkable world of the Paralympics.

This episode is brought to you by Advanced 3D.

Transcript

Paralympics Overview and Classification Explanation

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to Season 9 of the Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast. This is where we chat with experts in the field, patients who use these devices, physical therapists and the vendors who make it all happen. Our goal To share stories, tips and insights that ultimately help our patients get the best possible outcomes. Tune in and join the conversation. We are thrilled you are here and hope it is the highlight of your day. Hello everyone, this is Brent with the Prosthetics and Orthotics podcast. Yours is actually out, but I've got my trusty sidekick, katie Richmond, with me. Well, actually she's not with me. She is in Paris at the Paralympics and I think that's pretty cool. So I know, katie, that it's about six hours ahead there and you've had a full day, but welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 1:00

Thank you, thank you, happy to be here in Paris. Thank you, thank you, happy to be here in paris.

Speaker 1 1:08

Well, that's a little different than kinston, but you're gonna get to experience kinston, uh, is it next week? So, uh, you know, don't do too many comparisons, but uh, and I don't know that there's, um, we have a lot of fried food, so that's a different type of delicacy, I guess. So I know you've been over there for a little bit and the Paralympics were the final destination, but can you tell us a little bit what you've been up to?

Speaker 2 1:34

Yes, my husband and I were lucky enough to travel around Normandy for about six days. We got to see Utah and Omaha beach and do a D-Day tour, which was just insane. Then we saw Versailles, but as far as the things outside of going to the Paralympics, probably that World War II museum and just seeing places that know you've seen in the movies, you've seen heard about in history books and um, d-day was a horrible weather day and we actually went when it was kind of rainy and it was a powerful place.

Speaker 1 2:22

So then from there.

Speaker 2 2:25

We came on into Paris, arrived into Paris around noon and we got tickets to the opening ceremony, which was awesome. Don't know what to say other than I've watched it so many times on TV. That to be there was amazing, overwhelming lots and lots of countries that, I'll be honest, sometimes I'm like, didn't know you were a country, uh, so just huge delegations china was the biggest by far, and then there were several with with a single athlete, and those were were pretty fun too, because they got some pretty big claps. Um, yeah, but it was very cool so was it also really crowded?

Speaker 1 3:21

from a spectator standpoint, how do you feel like the awareness around the games has been?

Speaker 2 3:27

Oh, massive. So a lot of events, specifically medal rounds, have sold out, which is practically a first in Paralympics. Practically a first in Paralympics, definitely, both nights that we were at Stade de France, which is where athletics, aka track and field, happens, both those nights it was it was full there, there weren't seats open. Uh, now we were lucky enough to go on two nights where pretty much every event was a metal event. So getting to see that was incredible.

Speaker 1 4:19

So just for the audience, and I mean for me, how does it typically work? I know that there's some adaptation to some of this and there's different levels. I've seen the t levels and all that stuff. But, um, lord brent, and so like, yeah, like, go through some of the stuff or some of the interesting stuff that they've done, adaptation maybe at a, at a higher, higher picture or a higher level than, say, if you're like in it, in it yeah, some of.

Speaker 2 4:51

I'll go over a couple easier ones where there's fewer categories or classifications. The first event we went to was wheelchair tennis and there are two categories in wheelchair tennis and the. Everyone plays in a wheelchair, no matter what. However, the two classifications are quad, meaning that you have and you are affecting on all four of your limbs that either could be the absence or the lack of function, strength but you have to have deficiency in all four limbs. And then there's an open category, that is, you might be missing a leg or have some disparity in your lower extremity strength. You're still in a wheelchair, but you have total trunk control. And so those are the two classifications. So seeing somebody with no legs come and then compete against somebody who might walk out in bilateral prostheses with their chair to, yeah, it's pretty crazy because on the street you may not consider these two athletes the same category, but that's how they are classified. So that's wheelchair tennis, just two categories.

Speaker 2 6:20

Weightlifting we did powerlifting today and that was super awesome. There aren't really any classifications in weightlifting, which is a little. Well, there's 10 categories by weight. But you could have cerebral palsy, spina bifida you could have. You could be of short stature, you could be an amputee anything, and you are still. You're competing against each other, so you might walk out, you might roll out, you might crutch out, but all power lifting is bench press, so that was really awesome. Today we saw a couple world records. Um, though, the first one we saw were 41 kilograms, meaning they themselves only weighed up. Oh no, it's my stuff that spilled. Sorry again, brent. Yeah, it's in my suitcase. If that makes you feel better, it's all in my suitcase. It's my hair stuff. At least it smells good, try again. So the women in the 41 kilogram category themselves weigh just under 91 pounds, and they're lifting 220 pounds. The woman who won gold set the Paralympic record with her, I think, first or second lift, then set a world record, then set another world record. It, yeah, it was powerful.

Speaker 1 8:30

That's cool. So that sounds like it's pretty open, like you've got, yes, like there's not all these different categories. So when does it start getting really technical?

Diverse Paralympic Sports Overview

Speaker 2 8:42

Ooh, swimming, which we did not go to swimming and we're not going to, but I, yeah, swimming is one and then track and field is another. So a couple examples let's see. We saw the men's hundred meter race and some women's, but we know that like okay, so that's Usain Bolt. We have one fastest man at a hundred meters. We saw metals, one in T35, which is for runners with moderately, that are moderately affected in the legs and have their coordination affected in the trunk and possibly the arms, and typically they achieve stability by short, fast strides. So, honestly, most of these guys you're going to see them go out there and not know they have any disability at all.

Speaker 2 9:55

We saw several blind categories, which that is in the T11. Your vision is so bad that you either are totally blind or it's restricted to. You'd have to be 25 centimeters away to know that an object is in front of you. So all of those runners have guides that run with them, holding on to typically a little. They call it a tether, kind of like a hair tie, and in the 100 meters in particular, the best athletes are the ones that have a guide who matches their stride, because even if your guide is faster than you and is not like holding you back. If your strides aren't the same length. You aren't, you aren't as smooth in the hundred meters. So there's multiple categories for blindness. And the second, let's see, I think it's T12 and T13. You might have one person who is running with a guide and one person who isn't in the same race.

Speaker 1 11:19

So they either see enough or hear they like chasing something, okay they see enough.

Speaker 2 11:27

Typically it's that the distance is short enough okay like if you can see large objects on either side of you. The hundred meters isn't a big deal because you run straight oh, gotcha Okay a triathlon which we did not get tickets to, but by some miracle we stumbled upon it.

Speaker 2 11:48

And again it's just like after wanting to be a a spectator for so long. For so long I've followed Melissa Stockwell. She is a military vet lost her leg in Iraq. She has been dominating para triathlon for this is her at least her fourth, maybe her fifth Paralympics. We were trying to cross the street and she ran by and I got to scream her name, uh, and then we saw her on the street later, so that that was pretty incredible.

Speaker 1 13:00

Did you watch any um cycling or the or the like the velodrome type of stuff?

Speaker 2 13:05

I did not. I did not. Not enough time in the day.

Speaker 1 13:12

I hear you, so I know that another one that you were looking forward to was the sitting volleyball.

Speaker 2 13:19

Yes, we got, and again, by some happenstance, we got to be there when the US women played Italy. We won. It was awesome. Again, you know, just everybody lines up at the beginning, national anthems are played and you've got individuals who, visually, you have no clue that they would be a para-athlete, and then one of their longtime players, who is excellent, has a rotationplasty, and several of the women are like long congenital Symes amputees, like long congenital signs amputees. There was a young lady who is appeared congenital. Her left hand is missing. So just all along, different heights, shapes, sizes of people, people and all together making that team and and they actually took them it's the best out of five. So they won three straight sets against italy so what is the?

Speaker 1 14:38

you've got to be sitting, but what's? What is the main um rule on? That's the main rule.

Speaker 2 14:44

So your, your butt, has to be on the ground correct okay when you make contact with the ball, you need to have your butt on the ground and, additionally, my understanding is that you can't move around the court. Your your butt has to leave the court when you're scooting around. But you can't like stand up? Then sit down okay you kind of have to be low to the ground and when you make contact, whether you're bumping, setting or your butt's got to be on the floor.

Speaker 1 15:25

Okay, okay, well, that should be fairly easy to enforce. I would think yeah. Now what about the I saw it on the news the guy that was like super, super tall it?

Speaker 2 15:41

seems like that's a pretty good advantage. Yes, yes, he is. He's eight feet tall and he uses a wheelchair. He did stand for his national anthem. I believe he was Iran. I think you're right on the Iran Him sitting.

Speaker 2 16:04

He could easily have his hand on the shoulder of the man next to him. He is, um. Again, he's another one that, like, since I've known about the paralympics, I learned about sitting volleyball and there has not been a time that goes by where you don't, you don't see him because, um, I'm not even gonna try and and say his name, uh, but he is awesome and he did very well. Uh, they, iran won. Yeah, they beat germany. Uh, I did not see it. However, or no, not that one. Um, the one thing.

Speaker 2 16:56

I have seen a couple things on instagram of people talking about like what's the coolest sport or what's what, and I I happen to agree I have not seen it here. I did see it at the for the London Paralympics. The last place to qualify in the U? S for the Paralympics that year was Indianapolis. We hosted that event and so I worked it and I got to see people doing long jump, visually impaired long jump, and I I cannot think of another, more scary thing that you have to be so brave because you're blindfolded.

Speaker 2 17:46

Your guide, your aid, points you in the direction At the end of that, however many meters it takes to do you know before you jump off the pit and then goes to the end and claps in sequence and increases the frequency of their claps as the runner gets closer and then they launch themselves towards the sand and hope they not only do, they hope they make it in the distance that they want to go, but they hope they make it in the pit. And I've heard that from some people that it can be painful to land in the sand wrong on a long jump. Some of these guys don't make the sand all the time and end up hitting the edge of the pit and to then be like nope, I got this, I'm going to go again is incredible. I got this, I'm going to go again is incredible and probably one of the bravest things I think you could. You could do.

Speaker 1 18:52

Did you um get to watch any of the uh the basketball?

Speaker 2 18:59

No, we did not make it to wheelchair basketball. Okay, we did make it to wheelchair rugby. Aka murder ball those.

Speaker 1 19:12

Yeah, that that would be insane. I mean the the clashing of the chairs and all that stuff it's, and helping each other get up and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 19:22

That's just wild yeah, that's another interesting one when it comes to categories, because you know it's a single team and well, fun fact, the reason that wheelchair rugby was developed was because wheelchair basketball was already in existence at the time. However, those with quadrilateral involvement so both arms and legs found themselves not being able to compete as much or as highly as they would like in wheelchair basketball because they were outplayed by those who didn't have upper extremity involvement or trunk involvement. So in the 70s, canada actually developed this and it was to have more inclusive for quadrilateral athletes and that could be. There were a couple quadruple amputees there, most lots of spinal cord injuries, some spina bifida. But you have to.

Speaker 2 20:38

Each player is categorized with the highest functioning individual on the court is a 3.5. And they have total good trunk control, literally. Just their hands have some sort of issue. And then you have three, two and a half two, one and a half one and then a half point which is the most severely impaired. Which is the most severely impaired where you're talking. They're strapped to the back of their wheelchair because they have such poor trunk control. They, they can't control their trunk enough. If they were to, you know, slump over.

Speaker 1 21:21

Right.

Speaker 2 21:22

And you get. You get eight points on on the court at once. So you have four players, and so you kind of try and figure out okay, we have two really good guys who are both 3.5. And then that gives us seven. So we only have one point left to go on the court. So they pick two guys who were 0.5s and just the strategy, and who you put on the court with whom? Um? Offense versus defense. Typically the higher numbered guys with less impairment are offensive, where the lower ones, who have less dexterity in their hands, are defensive and literally use themselves as battering rams against people. Yeah, it's pretty crazy that's nuts.

Speaker 1 22:18

Well, fun, uh, fun fact, I guess. When I was a resident uh in charlotte, um, the ua team usa would practice there and I got to be friends with David, david Kiley, um, who I guess I mean he was. He. I knew that he was big in basketball, but I didn't really know how big until I started finding out more about him. But anyway, I would hand cycle with Team USA as part of their training and I have never been so sore in my whole life.

Speaker 1 22:53

And so I was the guy I rolled up and they're like hey, brent, time for you to get the bikes out of the truck. So I'd get all the bikes going. And so I thought we're're rolling along, going well, and I'm in the uh in the back and I'm just really not working that hard, I'm just pulled right into the slipstream. And that is the aerodynamic stuff is crazy, like how you get sucked in, like that was the first time that I really realized how important that was. And then they have these like little wheelie bars on the back and when they're like okay, Brent, you're going to have to pull for a little while. So then you have to roll out front, and I'm going and they're, and they're just like pounding the back of my chair and like, and they're like, come on, man, you got to go harder, harder.

Speaker 1 23:49

So I did that for a while. Yeah, I mean really, and I remember getting in my car and I was so sore and I was just so glad my drive was straight because, like, I could not get my hands on top of the steering wheel to turn when I first started doing this. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and it was my first time being around these athletes that are just incredible at what they do, and then I got to see a lot of the basketball stuff too. So that was fun. I'd like to take a little bit of a turn into the weeds of some of the prosthetic stuff that you saw, so components and such, and so one of the things that I, you know, looking through some of the pictures and such, it looks like the knee of choice for most of the runners, transfemoral runners, is the autob. Uh, whatever that number is, uh, the round one.

Speaker 2 24:47

Three are. It's the only one I saw.

Equipment Challenges in Paralympic Athletics

Speaker 1 24:50

Yeah, oh, it is the only one you saw, so none of the okay, okay, yeah, so I mean, uh, that's, that's the other.

Speaker 2 24:59

Pretty wild option was mounting the blade directly to your AK socket.

Speaker 1 25:05

Yeah, so what is your feeling about the hip abduction versus God?

Speaker 2 25:11

bless, I cannot speak as I have two legs and only a book knowledge, but I cannot imagine having to swing my hip. I mean some of the bilaterals and now I didn't see them this time bilateral AKs I'm speaking from prior experience so it could be different. A lot of them choose to almost do not quite a stubby, but like one of the larger blades, but that still makes them short, since they're AKs, and that seems to go really well for them. There are a few unilateral AKs who go with no knee, one of them being Melissa Stockwell, and she's relatively short and again, I have no idea. I've never actually gotten to meet her or speak with her. My sneaking suspicion is that her limb is maybe so short that the motion it takes to activate the knee over the course of a triathlon is too much.

Speaker 2 26:33

I saw Ezra French in the hundred meter that he won gold as well, as the last night at the high jump, where he won gold as well, and he's one where in that category there, where in that category some people had legs, some people didn't have legs, some people who were amputees used a prosthesis and some didn't, and I think really all I could do from just sitting in the stands watching was assess limb length, and that seemed to be the factor that if you didn't have a long enough lever arm in your femur to really get that act exactly how you needed to act, then those guys went without um and just jumped one-legged over the high jump wow so, and then let's talk about feet.

Speaker 1 27:38

So what I mean? Was it the whole gamut of feet? Oser autobock and phil hour Hour, or who was winning out there?

Speaker 2 27:47

On the track Oser. Okay 99 to 1. Autobach was out there, ezra being one of them. I believe he was in. I'm not good at names or numbers, but I did not see, I really didn't see any fell hour. I know they have a presence in the paratriathlon area and those athletes, but on the track it was a lot of yellow, a lot of Oser yellow.

Speaker 1 28:25

Cool, so I mean so it sounds like the sprint stuff oser kind of dominated, but I bet it's kind of wild to see the oser feet with the uh autobock knee. That's an interesting combo, right, yeah and quite a few.

Speaker 2 28:37

You know it wasn't like oh, we're all, oh, I'm gonna use this knee, so therefore I'm gonna use an autobock foot as well. It was a mix and match.

Speaker 1 28:49

Now with the autobock knee it's got a pyramid on the bottom. Did you see? Most of the people had a proper posterior mount foot setup, proper posterior mount foot setup, or was it some of them actually used like a?

Speaker 2 29:17

pylon and a tube clamp type of thing. I'm sure I have pictures of this. I feel like most had proper feet, not pylons. Now, didn't Oser and or Ottobock recently come out with those blades that have the four holes on the top where you don't have to posterior mount but like there's nothing else? They have so many sizes and heights that you can get right up to the height of practically mounting it directly to the knee.

Speaker 1 29:49

Right, I think. Well, I mean, I know that like that, uh, I would use the little, that bracket piece. You would still have to drill the doubt, the two things in the back, but correct, but you're saying another carbon. Is there room for improvement? Um, for, for some of this technology that that you're seeing, I mean I'm sure that there were probably some things I cannot believe you're going out and doing as well as you are on something like that um did. Were there any of those moments?

Speaker 2 30:25

You know, not too many. You know, at the track we were lucky enough, you know, to be seeing high level events where I don't I'm not sure exactly how you become, you know, an ambassador for OSER or something like that, but everybody looked like they had some pretty good stuff. Now, does that mean they only made it to that level because they have pretty good stuff? So therefore you didn't make the final, not because of your ability but because of your equipment. I don't know. I didn't see anything too crazy. I saw a couple interesting orthoses, slash prosthoses for limb length discrepancy, but as far as your standard AKBK sprinters, and we saw up to the 400 meter distance. Everybody kind of had the same equipment.

Speaker 1 31:35

Okay.

Speaker 2 31:36

I'm sure that that is not the case and of course in my mind I'm always wondering. You know, I want some data points for all of this.

Speaker 1 31:52

Right right.

Speaker 2 31:53

What would you rate your socket comfort in your everyday leg? What would you rate your socket comfort in your athletic leg, right, your athletic leg? You know these things that did. Did you come in last place? Because you feel like crap and you've. You know, you've run all of these preliminary rounds to get into the final and you've got a big old blister on the you. There's so many factors that we can't know and won't know and these guys, being professionals, can hide that and push through.

Speaker 2 32:35

So it's just kind of crazy, Like there's a, there's an extra level of toughness, that well toughness, and you are truly relying on your prosthetist as well as your ability to make yourself as comfortable as you can in the field so autobock has a shop and it's funny because I talked to you about this when I started working with you and for you, about the fact that, like team USA doesn't have a team prosthetist, autobot does have a workshop and I tried to figure that out before coming here. Uh, could, couldn't get any details high enough. You know, in the powers that that be. But if you have any issue, you can go to this autobock pop-up shop and they have, like metal workers I'm talking welding, uh for discus, shot put and javelin for certain classifications. Instead of being in your wheelchair, you actually can kind of strap yourself into a steel cage that is bolted or strapped to the ground and those are more often than not custom to. You know what the athlete needs. So if something breaks or pops off the, the shop has a welder. They did show. I thought that was interesting. They this pop-up shop has a 3D printer for check sockets and they were showing these plaster molds. What I'm so confused about is how are we at a point where you're at the Paralympics and you need a check socket? That seems like a very scary place to be. So, no, I hope to figure out more about that, hopefully from someone within, but I'd be curious to know do they accept volunteers from anywhere? Do you have to be an Autobach employee to volunteer there? But yeah, just the chance of equipment malfunction seems incredibly high.

Speaker 2 35:26

I happen to sit next to to Ezra French's dad at the sitting volleyball. He won gold in the 100 meter and the high jump, both in T63. So he's a transfemoral. His dad was like oh yeah, I had to run a liner over to the stadium. Today. I'm like well, what if you didn't have a whole team? He's got mega sponsorships, toyota, all this stuff. What if you don't have a spare liner? You're one of two athletes in your country. Yeah, it's the inequity which is present in the olympics, I feel is exacerbated in the paralympics yeah, I, I would definitely see that, man.

Speaker 1 36:28

It's just so hard to you know, because the stuff you know so there's, it's just so specialized. So not only do you have the socket technology and all that stuff, but then you have these kind of niche products that you know. The reality is, even though Oser and Autobach may make these feet and knees and such I would say they're I'm not saying that they would do it, they're doing it out of the goodness of their heart, but this stuff is not cheap to make, and so it's almost like the snowball effect. You want to help, but it's more than just investing time. It is time, expertise and then money for these, these niche devices. So I think it's a. I think it's an interesting conundrum for sure it reminds me of um, I don't know.

Speaker 2 37:25

Have you heard of or know of, uh hunter woodhall?

Speaker 1 37:29

I saw, well, I saw the of it's him and his wife right, that are runners, yeah.

Speaker 2 37:35

Yep, she won a gold medal in long jump.

Speaker 1 37:39

Yep.

Speaker 2 37:40

I do not know the specifics, I only know what is out there on Instagram. But I know back in July his one of his, his his legs broke like day of couldn't compete because during warm-ups one of the bolts came out like got stripped so he didn't get. He didn't get to race. And talk about heart-wrenching you want to see something, go check out he. He actually shared some stuff on instagram about the horror that was that that time, just to essentially have honed your body, your mind, to a point so far beyond what most people in the world, anyone not even oh, disability, this that no anyone in the world and then you can't race because the bolt was broken, just rips my heart up wow, yeah, well, I know, at advanced 3d that's some of the stuff that we really want to look into and a little bit of a heartbeat behind.

Speaker 1 39:14

Why we do what we do is, you know, not only to help people with their everyday life stuff but hopefully to make this idea of competing and such you know, where you may not have bolts and things of that nature, where there are areas of failure and you can be comfortable in your prosthesis because of some of the stuff that we're doing. Um, so just kind of curious, did you see anybody running in a 3d printed prosthesis?

Speaker 2 39:45

nope, I did not that's nuts.

Speaker 1 39:48

Hopefully this is the last time. This will be the last time la will be out. Be out there, we'll be able to print sockets on people.

Speaker 1 39:55

Yeah, and hopefully over the next course of just a little bit, we're going to have some people in the like, the triathlon people and that sort of thing into some of these 3D printed sockets, because, man, that triathlon stuff is just brutal in general and there's so many different things that you have to do and the adaptations that people make to you know, between the run and the bike and the bike and the swim and or the where they're going to be long anyway for a foot, so that geometry just changes from the running and it's like on your and to go into the bicycle. So when you're running to through the transition to get on your bicycle, through the transition to get on your bicycle.

Speaker 2 40:53

Yeah, having recently worked with David Whalen he did not participate in the Paralympics, but he is over here, he just did an Ironman. I, of course, was thinking about transitions. Oh, how quickly can I either if I swam in a liner. Is my liner wet so that I can get into my bike? Thing, clip, whatever.

Speaker 1 41:22

Right.

Speaker 2 41:23

And then, okay, I get off the bike. How quickly can I lose that leg and get into, comfortably, safely, securely, a good fit into my running leg, comfortably, safely, securely, a good fit into my running leg? But that's only because I was thinking of the transitions. It depends because there's multiple lengths of triathlons. So if you are doing an iron man length the transition, no problem, take your, get your leg on right Cause you got to run. I don't know, is it like 70 miles or something crazy, or is it?

Speaker 1 41:59

the they. They run a marathon. They'll bike like 120 miles.

Speaker 2 42:05

Yeah, like there's two totally different problems. The sprint triathlete is looking for the fastest way to transition the long distance. They're like I, if I have to take a little bit longer to make sure that for this marathon my leg is going to fit well, I can take a little bit longer. But that I didn't even didn't even cross my mind until starting to work with him and get getting that explained. Didn't even cross my mind until starting to work with him and get getting that explained. And I think that's you know, kind of what's so cool about our jobs and what we get to do is you wouldn't know those things until you're in it. But then you get to meet someone and they're like no, this, this little thing that you didn't even know was important, is the most important thing to me, and being able to creatively come up with a way to fix a problem for a specific athlete for a specific event is a game changer.

Innovations in Paralympic Technology

Speaker 1 43:09

I think that's cool and I look, you know, figuring some of this stuff out as we go into 2024 and into 2025. I think that there's going to be some really neat stuff coming down the pike and we're going to be sharing some of that stuff at AOPA. Katie and I will be at AOPA here in 2024 in just a man just about a week, right out of week 2024 and just a man just about a week right out of week and um, so really looking forward to sharing with you some of the stuff that you haven't got to see, that we're really excited about. That, I believe, is unique to advanced 3d, you know, among other things, but, um, some of this material that we're using, uh, absolutely will apply to some of the athletes and such. So, uh, katie, thanks for sharing your time. I know it's getting late there, uh and uh, thanks for sharing your time and and uh, insight into the paralympmpics. I know our listeners, yeah, and thank you, our listeners, for listening to another episode of the Prosthetics and Orthotics podcast. We'll see you at AOPO, you.