Today’s Google Doodle Celebrates Wheelchair Tennis Paralympics 2024 In Paris

Did you see what the Google search web page served up Monday and Tuesday? The most recent Google Doodle confirmed two birds—one brown and the opposite blue—enjoying tennis in wheelchairs on the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris, France. And these birds had been fairly animated, actually. This animated cartoon confirmed the birds hitting the ball forwards and backwards with their rackets and commemorated the wheelchair tennis match that’s happening now on the Paris Paralympics 2024.

Wheelchair tennis has been one of many quickest rising wheelchair sports activities on the planet. Over the previous 5 a long time because it first turned an official sport, wheelchair tennis and its persevering with surge in recognition have proven that tennis is not only for the birds. It’s not only for folks with sure capabilities, both. It’s turn out to be an more and more inclusive sport, accessible to folks throughout many alternative ages, situations and life conditions. The World Well being Group estimates that round 80 million folks or 1% of the world’s inhabitants require wheelchairs for mobility.

All of this has been fairly inspirational to many all over the world. Due to this fact, it’s becoming that the Google Doodle web page dropshot the next caption below the animation: “Ace attitudes and stellar serves. Wheelchair Tennis begins in the present day at Stade Roland-Garros!” And also you don’t must ace a tennis quiz to know that Roland Garros Stadium and its famed purple clay courts function the annual website of the French Open. That is the place the wheelchair tennis occasions of the 2024 Summer season Paralympics will proceed by way of September 7.

The occasions are happening on the identical courts because the 2024 French Open did this previous Spring with no actual modifications to the sizes of the courts. Gamers additionally use the identical forms of rackets, tennis balls and internet. Whereas enjoying, the gamers do use particular wheelchairs which have a pair of bigger cambered wheels within the rear and two smaller castor wheels within the entrance together with considered one of two small “anti-tip” castor wheels in the direction of the rear.

The principles in wheelchair tennis are basically the identical as conventional tennis with one exception: the “two-bounce rule.” Not like conventional tennis the place a participant should hit the ball again over the web earlier than the ball bounces twice on his or her facet, in wheelchair tennis a participant can enable the ball to bounce as much as two instances. The additional allowable bounce accounts for the truth that it’s no small feat to must maneuver the wheelchairs as adeptly as they do throughout the courtroom.

The 2024 Paris Paralympics are courting a spread of various singles and doubles tennis attracts for each women and men. Along with the Open attracts for these with everlasting decrease limb impairments, there are Quad attracts for many who moreover have higher limb impairments that prohibit their capability to maneuver the racket and wheelchair as nicely.

Again in September 2022, I lined the 2022 U.S. Open Wheelchair Tennis Championships and the way the game basically started after a 1976 snowboarding accident left American Brad Parks paralyzed from the hips down. Parks together with Jeff Minnebraker pushed arduous to get the game rolling, combat an uphill battle for some time towards obstacles similar to inertia and different issues that may preserve folks from getting modern stuff carried out. Finally, although, the game hit a bunch of house runs and grand slams—all 4 of them, in actual fact. The game has turn out to be integral components of the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon Championships and U.S. Open. And the Worldwide Tennis Federation Wheelchair Tennis Tour has blossomed into greater than 150 occasions.

The game has additionally turn out to be a fixture of the Paralympics. France was really the primary European nation to determine an official wheelchair program within the Eighties. At first of the next decade in 1992, the game made its Paralympic debut in one other European nation, Spain, particularly in Barcelona. Since then, the Paralympics wheelchair tennis area has grown and grown.

This yr’s version of the Paralympics wheelchair tennis occasions includes a star-studded area. Headliners within the males’s Open singles competitors embrace Alfie Hewett from Nice Britain, Martin De La Puente from Spain, Gustavo Fernandez from Argentina and Todiko Oda kind Japan. Oda is the inheritor obvious in Japan to the legendary Shingo Kunieda, a fixture in conversations about who’s the GOAT—biggest of all time—in wheelchair tennis.

Talking of GOATs, within the ladies’s Open singles draw, in the present day (September 3), The Netherlands’ Diede de Groot swept into the semi-finals with a straight set victory over Luoyao Gao from China. That wasn’t super-surprising since de Groot has type of dominated the game in recent times. She’s achieved a Grand Slam—that’s, all 4 Grand Slam titles in a single yr—not simply as soon as, not simply twice, however thrice from 2021 by way of 2023. Each time de Groot performs in a serious match she will be able to add to her GOATish credentials, one thing that’s price watching.

So, in case you are looking for a sport to observe that isn’t solely enjoyable but additionally inspirational, you might wish to give wheelchair tennis a shot in case you haven’t already. The game has loads of the technique and motion that’s inherent in every kind of tennis. However it additionally includes athletes who’ve moved previous adversity and may transfer round their wheelchairs deftly in methods that you could be not have seen earlier than.