South African sports tourists visiting Paris for the Paralympic Games that ended yesterday (8 September) were met by a startling site as they made their way to venues hosting the Games. A lineup of six inspirational paralympic athletes, emblazoned on the electric-powered buses used for transport between venues, included South African shot-put star Tyrone Pillay.
Pillay won a bronze medal at the 2016 Paralympics and competed in 2020, but retired from competitive sports before the 2024 edition. However, he was still one of the most active athletes in Paris in the past few weeks, as a result of working in the Olympic and Paralympic development department at Toyota, one of the major sponsors of both Games.
So inspirational has he been at Toyota over the years, the company’s racing team worked with him in 2023 to develop a new kind of prosthetic leg with better load distribution in order to be both lighter and stronger. The revolutionary leg was on display throughout the Olympics and Paralympics at Toyota House, a temporary headquarters established near the Eiffel Tower to showcase Toyota’s vision of future mobility.
Toyota president Akio Toyoda first declared six years ago that it would evolve from being a motoring business to becoming a “mobility company”. This strategy culminated in Toyota being named worldwide mobility partner of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).
The fruits of the strategy were most visible down the road from Toyota House, at a temporary installation called Inclusive Mobility Park, a showcase of mobility solutions, open until this Tuesday. The Inclusivity devices include cars, wheelchairs, prosthetic legs and even an ice-cream truck for the mobility-impaired.
The Ice-cream truck for the disabled to do a regular Job. Photo: ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK
Some of the vehicles, like the Accessible People Mover (APM), were already in active use. A battery electric vehicle designed in Belgium by Toyota Motor Europe and produced in Portugal, the APM is designed to offer “last-mile service” in transporting people with accessibility needs. Around 250 APMs were deployed in Paris to support the transportation of athletes, visitors, and staff during the Games.
The Yosh-E converts a traditional wheelchair into an electric vehicle by attaching a motorised third wheel fitted with an accelerator, reverse gears and mechanical brake. Developed together with Austrian mobility startup Klaxon, it was originally described as an “electric wheelchair e-puller”, and has a range of 25 km. About 50 were available in the Athletes Village during the games, and a further 150 were used during the opening ceremony of the Paralympics.
The Yosh-E traditional wheelchair converted into an electric vehicle Photo: ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK.
WHILL Autonomous Model, a self-driving electric wheelchair that can be preprogrammed to follow a defined route or be controlled from a tablet, was a star of the show. Developed by a startup comprising inventors from San Francisco and Tokyo, it is in use in airports around the world.
It uses cameras and sensors to detect obstacles while driving and stops automatically, reducing the risk of collisions with people and objects.
As WHILL puts it, “This service not only streamlines mobility operations, but also provides users with an improved customer experience by giving them more freedom, confidence, and independence.”
WHILL autonomous wheelchair, Photo: ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK
Glenn Crompton, vice president of marketing at Toyota South Africa Motors, said: “Showcasing these ground-breaking inclusive mobility products forms part of our commitment to ensure that athletes, their families, staff, volunteers, and spectators can navigate the Games effortlessly, sustainably, and safely.”
Toyota sponsored two athletes at the Paralympics, including Louzanne Coetzee, who took bronze in the 1500m T11 event for visually impaired athletes. Puseletso Mabote competed in the T63 100m and long jump.
“We couldn’t be prouder of the achievements of Puseletso and Louzanne,” said Crompton. “Training for any tournament, especially one as big as representing your country on a global stage, is no small feat. It takes a lot of determination and sacrifice. We are committed to supporting their journey towards excellence.”
The only gold medalist from South Africa was Mpumelelo Mhlongo, who triumphed in the men’s T44 100m final. Three other athletes won bronze medals: Nicolas Pieter du Preez in para-cycling, and Donald Ramphadi and Lucas Sithole, who came third in the Wheelchair Tennis Quad Doubles event.
Toyota chief scientist Gil Pratt said at a media briefing in Paris that he believed the Paralympics “are the real Olympics”, as athletes had to overcome so many more challenges than those in the main Olympics.
However, he told us later in an exclusive interview, he did not foresee technology allowing Paralympic athletes to compete on the same level as regular athletes.
“In many cases, actually technology can help a person be even more competitive than an able-bodied person,” he said. “Some of the spring-based prosthetic legs that we see actually allow a person to go faster. So I don’t think it’s quite a matter of matching an able-bodied person, but of figuring how to make the competition exciting and motivating.”
The high-tech prosthetic leg developed by Toyota Gazoo Racing for South African athlete Tyrone Pillay, on display in Paris. Photo: ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK
In some cases, it was almost as if the athletes were gaining superpowers in the kind of mechanisms that they use.
“A colleague of mine, Hugh Herr, has prosthetic legs, and he absolutely feels that in some ways, his prosthetic legs, of various different designs that he wears, allow him to do things that ordinary people cannot do. He’s a rock climber, so some of the time he puts on prosthetic legs that allow him to do climbing that he could not do as an able-bodied person. He can actually adjust his height depending on what mood he’s in.”
That does not mean, however, that any use of technology is allowed in the Paralympics.
“You’ll see Paralympians choose a particular kind of assistive technology that suits them best. I think that the Paralympic Committee has done an extremely good job figuring out how to make the competition fair for the particular kind of disability a person has, and also the assistive technology. And I am just incredibly happy about how it’s done.”
Even more fascinating than the use of assistive technology for athletes is the implications for people in general. As opposed to science fiction visions of this kind of assistive technology turning people into cyborgs that have enormously powerful abilities, the reality is more practical.
“I think that it’s actually more likely to be used for the elderly. If you look at many parts of the world, societies are aging tremendously, and I think that assistive technologies will actually end up being used much more for aging society, to help people to feel that they still have the capabilities that they had when they were younger. In some ways, it’s almost like building a time machine for people, which is really what we’re after.”
* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on social media on @art2gee.