One person, each day, to help make sense of the Paralympics.
German long jumper Markus Rehm has the number nine as his phone wallpaper. The nine is to represent his goal – to become the first person in history to jump nine metres. After losing his right leg in a wakeboarding accident, his success is helped by the fact he is a prosthetist by profession, and researches how to support people with a similar impairment. He has competed against able-bodied athletes, and in 2023 jumped 8.72 metres, only 23 centimetres short of the able-bodied world record of Mike Powell of 8.95 metres set in 1991. His prosthesis has sparked a debate over the course of his career about whether it gives him a competitive advantage, and he was blocked from competing at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
