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There are many sports that blind people can play. There is also an Olympics for the disabled called the Paralympics. They cater for all disabilities. I will not explain all the sports that blind people can play but I will do just a few of them which I play and have experience in. Swimming is a sport which many blind people enjoy. It is my favourite sport. I usually go to swimming lessons every Thursday at 5.30 pm. I enjoy it every time I go! Blind people take longer to develop in swimming than other people for various reasons. The first is co-ordination. Blind people do not have as much co-ordination. The second is usually fear of going too deep in the water. I once had an experience at a friend�s pool where I swam too deep. I was in total fear because I couldn�t find the bottom. There are golf clubs [not the ones you hit with] all over the place. I usually play put-put or driving every Sunday. In put-put I take about three shots to get to the hole and in driving I can hit the ball 75 metres. You need a lot of co-ordination in golf, so there are not many professional blind golfers. There is one who I know who lives in Perth. He runs a golf session for children to help them learn how to play. By the way, what goes put-put-put-put-put-put-put? A bad golfer! Surprisingly enough cycling is a sport for the vision impaired and blind. Instead of riding a normal bike (a single) we use tandems (a bike for two people, two seats, two sets of pedals etc, but ONLY 1 set of handlebars). The vision impaired person is the �back rider� and a fully sighted �front rider� rides on the front and steers the bike. There are two main types of riding: road riding involving racing on roads and track racing in the velodrome. This sport is well established in WA with a large team training on a regular basis. So far teams have competed in the Barcelona and Atlanta Paralympics and several world championships. These are only a few of the sports played by vision impaired and blind people. Others include rock climbing, abseiling, cricket (using a ball with bells in it) and bowling. Just about any sport can be played by the vision impaired, some of them will just require a bit of extra effort and some adaptation. Return to Independent Living Return to Dogs, Canes and Talking Microwaves main page Go to Association for the Blind of WA |