’All winners’ at inaugural Miss Wheelchair World

WARSAW: In her elegant evening dress and perfectly styled hair and make-up, Maria Diaz looks like any beauty pageant contestant — except for the wheelchair she has been confined to since being shot by a stranger ten years ago. Maria is one of 24 young women who gathered in Warsaw on Saturday to compete for the first-ever title of Miss Wheelchair World. “It does not matter who wins the crown. We are all winners,” said the 28-year-old from Chile, who is a professional wheelchair tennis player. “It is our first opportunity of its kind to show the world that we can do anything we want,” she added. Belarussian psychology and social pedagogy student Aleksandra Chichikova won the crown at a gala evening in the Polish capital. The contestants presented themselves in national costumes, cocktail and evening dresses. They also performed elaborate dance routines, some by moving their wheelchairs on their own and others with the help of assistants. They talked mostly about their personal experiences, including the challenges of life in a wheelchair. Finland’s Kati van der Hoeven can only talk to her husband by moving her pupils, while Mirande Bakker from the Netherlands is the victim of a doctor’s mistake. Polish kinesiotherapist Beata Jalocha has been confined to a wheelchair since 2013 when a suicide jumper landed on her. “It Is the first initiative of its kind in the world,” jury president Katarzyna Wojtaszek-Ginalska said. The goal is to “change the image of women on wheelchairs so they would not be judged solely by” their disability, added the 36-year-old handicapped mother. Wojtaszek-Ginalska is head of the Only One Foundation, which has organized the contest drawing on experience from Polish beauty pageants for the handicapped.

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