World champions Claudia Santos and Tom Aggar will head a strong field at the Beijing Paralympic Games rowing event starting on Tuesday, featuring several outstanding rowers with solid chances of securing gold medal.
The Games' most recently-introduced sport features three days of 1,000m racing in arms men's single (AM1x), arms women's single (AW1x), trunk, arms mixed double (TA2x) and the legs, trunk, arms mixed coxed four (LTAMx4+).
In women's singles, world champion Santos of Brazil is considered one of the heaviest favorites.
She impressively took the world crown at Oberschleissheim, Germany in her first year of international competition and has worked tirelessly to refine her style and race tactics since that breakthrough 2007 victory.
Santos will find her most formidable opposition in an in-form Svitlana Kupriianova of Ukraine.
Kupriianova finished fourth at the 2007 World Championships but has trained solidly and shown dramatic improvement since that time.
She secured her berth at the Beijing 2008 Paralympics with an emphatic win over world championship silver medallist Luidmila Vauchok from Belarus at the World Cup regatta at Poznan, Poland in June.
Britain's 2006 world champion Helene Raynsford did not compete at the 2008 World Cup but has the experience to challenge for a place on the podium while 2006 and 2007 World Championship bronze medallist Martyna Snopek from Poland will also be in the medal hunt.
Three-time Paralympic Games track and field athlete Laura Schwanger of the United States celebrated her recent conversion to rowing by taking the gold medal in this event at the 2007 U.S. national Paralympic Games.
Schwanger, Portugal's Filomena Franco and China's Zhang Jinhong are determined campaigners and will certainly be athletes to watch.
"The sport helps me find out my potential," said Zhang, who won the women's singles in the Asian Championships after only months' training last year. "It is easy for me to win in Asia, but I don't think I can make it happen again in the Paralympics."
"The medal hopefuls are mainly coming from Europe, but I never rule myself out of the competition. Everybody gets a chance.
"The Games were like a dream. I never thought that I could take part in the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics, but it is where I am now. I will give all out and let's see what will happen," added Zhang, who had been a worker in a factory in south China's Guangdong province.