Broken kit, no problem: the Paralympics rapid‑repair lifeline

"The athletes are training hard and they have made their goal to come here, they arrive in good shape and then one day before their event something happens to their equipment," Franzel, who heads up the round-the-clock operation for Ottobock, the official technical service partner at the Milano Cortina Winter Paralympics, told Reuters. "It has been very warm this last week and the cross-country and biathlon athletes have been asking us if we can cut their uniforms and racing suits from a long version to a short one," Franzel explains. Other challenges Franzel and his team have overcome include building a custom thumb orthosis for a French para-skier who arrived with a broken thumb, while a Bulgarian athlete needed a new fingertip for his hand prosthesis.