Sailing at the 2008 Summer Paralympics

Sailing at the 2008 Summer Paralympics was held in 2 designated areas on the Yellow Sea, Qingdao, Shandong province, from September 8 to September 13. All sailing athletes, coaches and carers worked on their boats or launched from the docks of the Qingdao International Sailing Centre, which also included the Qingdao Paralympic Village, a 5-star hotel which previously housed the Olympic Sailing athletes.

Classfication

Disability classification in sailing is done by a committee, which gives each competitor a number score with lower numbers corresponding to more severe disability. To take part in Paralympic sailing, an athlete must have a score of 7 or less. In the three-person event, the sum of the sailor's scores cannot exceed 14. In the two-person keelboat event, the helm must be a classification 1 (severly disabled) sailor, and one of the team must be female.

Event and KeelBoats

Three sailing events were held. All are mixed events, meaning that men and women compete together. The type of boat used in each competition is identified in parentheses.
*1-Person Keelboat (2.4mR)
*2-Person Keelboat (SKUD 18)
*3-Person Keelboat (Sonar)

The 2-person keelboat (SKUD18) made its official debut in the Paralympics. The only Paralympic class keelboat with a spinnaker, emblazoned with the national flag of each country. It is of interest to note that of the 11 countries competing in the SKUD event, 7 have female crew, who have to manually hoist and douse the difficult to handle spinnakers, aside from constantly trim all the sails.

Qualification

There will be 80 athletes (at least 12, at most 68 for the same sex) to take part in this sport.

Medal summary

Medal table

This ranking sorts countries by the number of gold medals earned by their sailors (in this context a country is an entity represented by a National Paralympic Committee). The number of silver medals is taken into consideration next and then the number of bronze medals. If, after the above, countries are still tied, equal ranking is given and they are listed alphabetically.

Medalists

In the 2-person keelboat event, all three of the medal-winning teams were composed of one man and one woman. Those three women were the first women to win Paralympic medals in sailing. [cite web |title=Two-Person Keelboat (SKUD18): US claims gold |date=2008-09-13 |publisher=The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad |url=http://en.paralympic.beijing2008.cn/news/sports/sailing/n214600552.shtml |accessdate=2008-09-19]

References

* cite web
title = Schedules and Results - Sailing
publisher = The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad
url = http://results.beijing2008.cn/WRMP/ENG/Schedule/SA.shtml
accessdate = 2008-09-19

External links

* [http://www.sailing.org/paralympics 2008 Paralympic Sailing Competition, Qingdao]
* [http://en.paralympic.beijing2008.cn Offical Site of the 2008 Summer Paralympics]
* [http://www.sailing.org/disabled IFDS/ Internatinal Association for Disabled Sailing]
* [http://www.sailing.org/home.php?PHPSESSID=ee34343dda002e08d82385ff3c3a0d69 ISAF/ Internatinal Sailing Federation]