Great Britain at the 2002 Winter Paralympics
| Great Britain at the 2002 Winter Paralympics |
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| IPC code | GBR | ||||||||
| NPC | British Paralympic Association | ||||||||
| Website | www |
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| in Salt Lake City | |||||||||
| Competitors | 2 in 1 sport | ||||||||
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Medals Ranked =23th |
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| Winter Paralympics appearances | |||||||||
Great Britain competed at the 2002 Winter Paralympics held in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, from 7 to 16 March 2002. The team was able to be made up of athletes from the whole United Kingdom; athletes from Northern Ireland, who elected to hold Irish citizenship under the pre-1999 article 2 of the Irish constitution, were eligible to represent either Great Britain or Ireland at the Paralympics. However no Northern Irish athletes took part in the Winter Paralympics until 2010 in Vancouver. In order to be eligible to take part in the Games athletes had to have a disability that fell into one of the six Paralympics disability categories.
Two British athletes competed, both in alpine skiing events, and no medals were won. The size of the team was a decrease from that which had entered previous Games, in the 1998 Winter Paralympics 20 British athletes had participated. One reason for this is that whilst funding for the two athletes was provided by the British Paralympic Association, it totalled only £1,500 compared to the £4 million worth of funding available to British athletes at the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Every participant at the Paralympics has their disability grouped into one of five disability categories; amputation, the condition may be congenital or sustained through injury or illness; cerebral palsy; wheelchair athletes, there is often overlap between this and other categories; visual impairment, including blindness; Les autres, any physical disability that does not fall strictly under one of the other categories, for example dwarfism or multiple sclerosis. Each Paralympic sport then has its own classifications, dependent upon the specific physical demands of competition. Events are given a code, made of numbers and letters, describing the type of event and classification of the athletes competing. Events with "B" in the code are for athletes with visual impairment, codes LW1 to LW9 are for athletes who stand to compete and LW10 to LW12 are for athletes who compete sitting down. Each different number refers to a different severity of impairement and defines the equipment that competitors may use; e.g. LW4 is for athletes with a single leg amputation below the knee who compete using two skis and two poles.
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