It was pouring rain outside, but that didn’t stop people coming all the way from Rockford and Geneva to attend the first “Train the Trainer” clinic put on by the new Chicago Paralympic Development Program.

Around four elite-level cycling coaches attended the clinic, along with personnel from a number of different Paralympics sports programs around Chicagoland and the clinic started with an overview of the new Paralympic Program and how World Sport Chicago hopes to expand the Paralympic opportunities in the area.

Two current hand-cycling athletes were present, Ramon Canellada being one.  Canellada works with Schwab Rehab and their hand-cycling program and gave an extremely informative presentation on how he was introduced the sport and what others need to consider before jumping in. 

Canellada talked about how he felt the most important aspect of the sport was finding the right bike for you and how the only way to do that was to “ask a bunch of different people and try out a bunch of bikes to find what works.”  You have to just get right in there and start cycling. 

There are a number of different bikes, from upright, to kneeling, to recumbent.  Once you do find the bike for you though that bike transforms you and Canellada added, “you don’t see your disability, you just see how fast you can go.”

Persons with spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries, cerebral palsy, are amputees, visually impaired, or have survived a stroke can all compete in hand-cycling in different classification levels that are based on the severity of their impairment.

Canadella talked about how after his accident his community rallied around him and that was how he found hand-cycling and the Schwab program.  He said the sport changed not only his life but how he viewed his impairment.  His story was incredibly inspirational.

The clinic finished up with Craig Giffin, the USOC Paralympic High Performance Director for Cycling, giving an in detail presentation about everything related to Paralympic Cycling.  His hope was to educate these cycling coaches about the different impairments and how to modify their coaching practices to include these athletes.  Griffin went over classifications, equipment selection, and adaptive, venue, activity and training considerations.  He taught these coaches how to train a hand-cycler.

After the presentations, a number of the coaches were even able to get into the hand-cycles that Canadella and his friends graciously brought to show.  Craig explained that the bikes themselves really are “the barrier to cycling,” with their cost ranging from two to five thousand dollars.  But through this program World Sport Chicago hopes to be able to provide opportunities in sports such as hand-cycling, otherwise unavailable to many kids. 

Canellada said it best, “Chicago wants bikes.