PARALYMPIC athletes in Athens will use specialist equipment designed and distributed by a small family-run North Yorkshire company.

Neuff Athletic Equipment, of Norton, has supplied throwing clubs and special weights and sizes of shots for the Paralympic Games, which will be held after the Olympic Games, in September.

Competitors include the visually impaired, people who suffer from cerebral palsy or spina bifida or have had amputations, as well as those who are confined to wheelchairs.

Dr Alan Neuff became involved supply of athletic equipment in 1966 as a hobby while he was running the chemistry department of an independent school in Sidcup, Kent.

A few years later, as a pole vault coach and grade official with the English Athletics Officials Association, he was asked to help run athletics meetings for patients of Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Buckinghamshire.

"A surgeon down there decided that some sort of competitive sport would be very good for the rehabilitation of people with disabilities, particularly for those with spinal injuries," said Dr Neuff, who moved to Ryedale with his wife Caroline in 1995.

"We did wheelchair games, racing in wheelchairs, throwing, snooker, archery and basketball, and from that has grown an international organisation - the Paralympic Games.

"The thing about disabled competitors is that they are exceptionally independent and exceptionally motivated. We just felt they needed some help and saw this as a way of helping them."

Much of the equipment used by Paralympic athletes is the standard Olympic equipment, but some is specially designed.

The throwing club and special weights and sizes of shot are used particularly by athletes with cerebral palsy.

The club is either thrown for distance or into a grid for accuracy. Dr Neuff is one of only two suppliers in the country. The club is made from either beech or ash and has to be a specific weight.

Because the weight of wood varies, extra aluminium or steel weights are fixed on the end. The timber part is made by Rogers Woodturners in Fangfoss, near Pocklington and the metal is fixed on in Kent.

Dr Neuff supplied 20 clubs and 100 shots of various weights and sizes to Athens, which have been designed using the knowledge and experience he has gained through working with disabled athletes.

His company also supplied equipment to the Olympic Games in Barcelona in 1992 and Atlanta in 1997.

Updated: 11:59 Friday, August 20, 2004