Incredible Paralympic icons

In another sign of the increasing popularity of disability sports in Germany, the ARD broadcaster will show parts of the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games live at peak times for the first time ever. “Paralympics at primetime! It’s historic, it’s amazing!” says Friedhelm Julius Beucher, President of the National Paralympic Committee Germany. “But it’s also appropriate and overdue,” he adds.The decision by ARD provides a well deserved stage for sportsmen and women and their amazing performances. But regardless of how the events are broadcast on TV, the athletes are achieving extraordinary feats. Let’s meet three members of the German Paralympics Team. 

Markus Rehm: long jump 

Markus Rehm is one of the most experienced and successful members of the German squad for the Paralympics. The 35-year old, who uses a prosthetic lower leg following a wakeboarding accident in his youth, has won four gold medals at Paralympic games alone: three for the long jump and one in the 4x100 metre relay. He holds world records in both disciplines, with a long-jump record of 8.72m and 40.52 seconds in the relay. Rehm is focusing on the long jump for Paris. He once described what sport means to him as, “Nowadays I would never trade a medal for a healthy leg.” 

Andrea Eskau: cycling 

“I enjoying being out in nature whether it’s winter or summer, so I play summer and winter sports,”says Andrea Eskau, describing the basis for her extraordinary success in level-headed terms. Paralysed in a cycling accident in 1998, Eskau has gone on to win eight gold medals from Paralympic games: four on her handbike at summer games and another four for the winter biathlon and long-distance skiing. Now 53, the reigning European champion is heading to Paris to compete in the handbike road time trials. 

Yannis Fischer: shot put 

Paris is a good hunting-ground for Yannis Fischer. It was there that he won a surprise gold medal at the 2023 World Championships in the shot put competition for short-stature athletes. Fischer, 22, is studying computer science at HFT Stuttgart, where he was chosen as sportsman of the year last year. He trains alongside non-disabled athletes at the Olympic base in Stuttgart, the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg. He says, “I think it’s great that we don’t differentiate between us.”