GERMANY’S OTTOBOCK HAS BEEN PART OF PARALYMPICS SINCE 1988
aws buzzed, drills rattled and sewing machines hummed as Victor Scody, a swimmer from Mauritius, wandered into the Paralympic repair workshop on Tuesday morning with a problem — or rather, problems.
The socket of his artificial leg needed an adjustment. It felt too loose in one area, too tight in another, and he felt too tall overall. The imbalance was hurting Scody’s back.
Examining the prosthesis, Julian Napp, a technician, sounded hopeful. “Maybe we can change something,” Napp said. “Maybe.”
When athletes arrive at the Paralympic Village, they care most about three things: internet access, food and the location of the repair shop, which the German company Ottobock has operated at every Paralympics since 1988.
That the workshop shares the same roof as the athletes’ dining hall underscores its importance. They cannot perform without proper nutrition. They cannot compete without their equipment.
So they flood the workshop, arriving in waves — after mealtimes, especially — with wheelchair tires to pump, axles to mend, frames to weld. More surgeons than mechanics, the technicians liken themselves to a pit crew at an auto race. Except that pit crews know which car they are servicing, when that car is going to pull in and which language they use to communicate with the driver.
“Every time the door opens,” said Peter Franzel, an organising director at Ottobock, “we get a surprise.”
The unpredictability of the job demands an array of skills from the technicians, beyond an expertise in prosthetics, welding or wheelchairs. Specialists who hail from 29 countries and speak 26 languages, they must be calm enough to handle the pressure of a workplace that handles at least 100 repairs every day. They must also be creative and intuitive enough to solve problems they have never seen before.
The service, which is provided to all athletes at no cost, extends to each venue, where on-site technicians change tires, tighten screws and adjust alignments. Only a few nations — including the US, Germany and the Netherlands — brought their own prosthetists to Rio, but athletes from those teams, which are among the largest at the Paralympics, still have access to the workshop. So do the official team prosthetists, who are granted privileges to work and make repairs there.
From previous competitions, Franzel said, Ottobock has learned how much of what to stock. Each station at each venue carries basics like nuts and a batch of sport-specific equipment. Through Thursday, Ottobock had made, or was in the process of making, 2,970 repairs, with the vast majority (2,435) involving wheelchairs. “I’m always happy if the numbers aren’t good because there are less problems,” Franzel said. “In a perfect games, we’d be playing cards.”