#paracanoeing

[positiveaboutdisability]

Debora Benevides is an amazing, 24 year old para-canoeist from Brazil.

Debora loved to spend her time in and around the water ever since she was a little girl. At age 15, she started canoeing for the BRA Va'a Canoe Club in her hometown, Rio de Janeiro. It quickly became clear that she was really talented at the sport. Within a few years, Debora started competing at international tournaments, including the world championships in Russia, Italy and Germany...

Her current ambition is to compete at the 2021 paralympics in Tokyo.

Debora uses a wheelchair because of arthrogryposis multiplex congenita(AMC). This is a congenital disorder which causes severe joint contractures in her lower limbs and leaves her unable to walk...

[lovingparalympics]

William Araka is a long way from home - and he looks it. A beacon of colourful Kenyan attire adrift in a sea of tracksuited athletes, he sits down and drops his crutches to the floor - crutches to replace the large, wooden pole with which he supported his withered right leg when he first arrived. Araka, who says he is about 40 years old, is Kenya's lone paracanoeist at the sport's world championships in Duisburg, Germany. At home, he is a fisherman. Fishing is a career forced upon him by polio, which he says "attacked" him as a five-year-old.

BBC Sport: Kenyan fisherman beats polio and poverty to paddle with elite