Paralympics pit crew: Staff of 30 prosthetic, wheelchair technicians at Games
PYEONGCHANG, Korea, Republic Of — A prosthetic leg with a lime green running shoe and white ankle sock lay stretched across a worktable in Ottobock’s repair centre at the athletes village.
A technician bent over it, painstakingly repairing the leaky valve that helps affix the prosthesis to the athlete’s stump.
One table over, a technician was adjusting another prosthetic leg that had been thrown out of alignment. The culprit was the artificial limb’s new black suede lace-up shoe with its thick rubber sole.
“The athlete got new shoes,” explained Peter Franzel. “For sure then you have a different height of the sole. This affects the whole alignment of the prosthesis, of the knee joint, and we had to do some adjustment on the heel of the prosthesis that compensates for the thicker sole.”