(ECNS) -- The 11th National Paralympic Games as well as the 8th Special Olympics World Games Wheelchair DanceSport competition kicked off in Wuhan on Wednesday.
Altogether 96 disabled athletes from seven provinces and municipalities, including Shanghai, Beijing and Hubei, participated in the competition.
Competitors danced to the music and completed three different styles of dance: cha-cha, samba and rumba.
Chai Baozhen, 59, of the Hubei team, has learned wheelchair dance for 13 years and participated in four Special Olympics Wheelchair DanceSport competitions.
Chai admitted that daily training is hard, but she still loves dancing.
Three years ago, Chen Zhong, a young man from Sichuan, lost consciousness from his waist down after he was hit by collapsed wall at a construction site.
This wheelchair dance competition was his debut after two months of training.
For disabled athletes, the wheelchair is equivalent to their feet. They need to rotate the wheelchair to move forward, draw back, turn around, and then move their upper limbs to show the beauty of the dance, said Xiong Lamei, an onsite dance coach.
The evaluation mainly depends on the performers' physical rhythm, dance moves and how well they cooperate with partners.
This competition encompasses two categories, Standard and Latin, including Duo Latin, Duo Standard, Combi Latin, Combi standard and so on.
