Rio Paralympics 2016: Inside the amazing repair shop where legs, arms and wheelchairs get fixed for gold
THIS is the incredible Paralympics workshop where saws, drills and sewing machines make Rio gold dreams come true.
Prosthetic legs balance on table tops, soles of feet are drilled into and wheelchairs are expertly repaired in the quest to be the best.
Shunjun Takahashi of Ottobock repairs a leg in RioGetty Images
The “surgeons'” HQ has 15,000 spare parts including knee joints, running blades and even a welding unit.
German company Ottobock are the specialists who make sure athletes’ dreams don’t fall apart through no fault of their own.
They have operated at every Paralympics since 1988 and their work is so important than they’re stationed right next to the village food hall.
More than 100 operations a day are performed – there have been almost 3,000 since the Paralympics began – and their specialists come from 29 countries and speak 26 languages.
It is common to see prosthetic limbs just lying round in the Ottobock workhouseGetty ImagesA technician repairs a blade in the athletes’ village at the Rio ParalympicsGetty ImagesOttobock workers talk while a person’s leg just lies in the workspaceGetty Images
Peter Franzel, an organising director at Ottobock, told the New York Times: “Every time the door opens we get a surprise.”
One of those was Team GB hero Dame Sarah Storey when she turned up with her broken spare bike.
The gold medal winner did not even know what part of her bike had broken off but Ottobock had to fix it.
They constructed a new piece made of carbon fibre and Storey said: “Even if you don’t have any wheelchair requirements or the prosthetic limbs, someone like me can turn up with this random piece and say, ‘Help!’
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