One event, each day, to help make sense of the Paralympics.
“You can’t really market ‘Murderball’ to corporate sponsors,” says Wheelchair Rugby player Mark Zupan in the 2005 film, Murderball. He was right. The sport changed from its ferocious name to Wheelchair Rugby in the late 1980s, and was added to the Paralympic programme in Sydney 2000. It’s played by athletes with physical impairments that affect at least three limbs and the trunk, with the aim to carry the ball over the opponent’s line by winding through the opposition team – or using brute force. Opposition players can block and crash into the ball carrier to stop their advance. It’s played on a court the same size as a regulation basketball court, and the goal-line is a eight-metre wide box in which players must carry the ball over to score a try.
