Text 7. The will to win

Athletes, if they want to reach the top of their chosen sport, have to train hard for hours every day. Their commitment to the sport and their achievements certainly deserve praise. This is true for both able-bodied athletes like Karl Lewis or Linford Christie, and for disabled athletes like Isabel Newstead, who carried the United Kingdom flag at the Barcelona Paralympic Games in 1992.

“We want to be recognised for our achievements, just like any other top class athletes. We are not interested in hearing how brave and wonderful we are,” says Isabel. “We are demonstrating our abilities in an environment where our disabilities don’t count.”

This shows that disabled athletes can only participate in a small number of events, and are unlikely to take on more sports in the near future.

Another disabled athlete, Chris Holmes, is a swimmer with gold, silver and bronze medals won at the Paralympics. He is blind and has to count his strokes to judge when he will reach the end of the pool, but this doesn’t lessen his speed. Competition among swimmers is so fierce that the

difference between the record times of the disabled and able-bodied in the 50-metre freestyle swimming event is only four seconds. With results like these, more andmore spectators have been attracted to the Paralympic Games.

The opening ceremonies and most of the wheelchair basketball games were sold out long before the start of the Atlanta Games. This is quite interesting if you bear in mind that in many past events, tickets had to be given away to attract spectators. This new interest is especially pleasing for Bob Steadward, president of the International Paralympic Committee, whose job is to promote greater awareness of and more participation in the disabled version of the games.

“I wanted to ensure that developing nations had the opportunity to send athletes to Atlanta,” says Steadward. “As a result of the money we had, and the money we received from the ICC International Olympic Committee, we were able to sponsor more than 100 athletes from 35 countries who would otherwise not have had a chance to come.”

More and more sports are being added to the Paralympic Games as the range of the athletes’ skills and abilities becomes known. Sailing had not been a Paralympic sport before, but Andrew Cassell, the captain of the British sailing team, helped it to be included. He was born with the

lower part of both his legs missing, but he never let this get in his way. He started sailing when he was ten years old and since then he has proved himself time and time again by winning races and even breaking world records.

So far, there are events for the blind, amputees, and people with cerebral palsy as well as wheelchair sports. Atlanta is the first Games to include mentally disabled athletes competing in swimming, as well as track and field events.

Many of the athletes have suffered accidents and illnesses, which would be enough to make most of us want to give up. But they are pushing back the barriers, which, until recently, kept the disabled from taking part in sports. They are the ones who are catching the public eye and

imagination, changing people’s perceptions of what ‘disability’ means and what extraordinary abilities the so-called disabled people possess.

Text 8. Why laughter is the best medicine?

8.1. Read the article below. The following sentences have been removed from the article. Decide in which numbered gap each one should go. (There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.)

A) Somewhere in the process of growing up we lose an astonishing 385 laughs a day.

В) It also makes our facial and stomach muscles work.

С) He is convinced that humour should be a part of every medical consultation.

D) Some have even been referred by their family doctors.

E) They divided forty university students into four groups.

F) This will also help improve your personal relationships.

G) But we could be losing our ability to laugh.

H) This is laughter therapy in action.

8.2. Our unserious side is being taken seriously by doctors. Laughing helps you fight illness – and gets you fit. But how it works is still being puzzled out.

A group of adults are lying in a circle on the floor listening to a recording of ‘The Laughing Policeman'. At first everyone feels ridiculous and there's only the odd nervous giggle, but suddenly the laughter becomes real. It quickly spreads around the room until everyone is infected by it. (1 _______)

Doctors are starting to believe that laughter not only improves your state of mind, but actually affects your entire physical well-being. The people lying in a circle are attending a workshop to learn the forgotten art of laughter. (2 ________)

Britain's first laughter therapist, Robert Holden says: 'Instinctively we know that laughing helps us feel healthy and alive. Each time we laugh we feel better and more content.'

(3 _______) A French newspaper found that in 1930 the French laughed on average for nineteen minutes per day. By 1980 this had fallen to six minutes. Eighty per cent of the people questioned said that they would like to laugh more. Other research suggests that children laugh on average about 400 times a day, but by the time they reach adulthood this has been reduced to about fifteen times. (4 _______)

William Fry – a psychiatrist from California – studied the effects of laughter on the body. He got patients to watch Laurel and Hardy films, and monitored their blood pressure, heart rate and muscle tone. He found that laughter has a similar effect to physical exercise. It speeds up the heart rate, increases blood pressure and quickens breathing. (5____)

Fry thinks laughter is a type of jogging on the spot.

Laughter can even provide a kind of pain relief. Fry has proved that laughter produces endorphins - chemicals in the body that relieve pain.

Researchers from Texas tested this.(6______) The first group listened to a funny cassette for twenty minutes, the second listened to a cassette intended to relax them, the third heard an informative tape, while the fourth group listened to no tape at all.

Researchers found that if they produced pain in the students, those who had listened to the humorous tape could tolerate the discomfort for much longer.

Patch Adams is both a doctor and a performing clown in Virginia, America. (7______) ‘There's evidence to suggest that laughter stimulates the immune system,’ says Adams, 'yet hospitals and clinics are well-known for their depressing atmospheres.' Adams practises what he preaches. He wears his waist-length hair in a ponytail and also has a handlebar moustache. He usually puts on a red nose when seeing patients.

8.3. Answer the questions.

1. Do doctors now understand exactly how laughter helps?

2. Do people generally laugh more or less than before? How can you explain that?

3. Is there any real evidence to suggest laughter helps?

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