Rowing is making its first appearance as a full Paralympic sport here in Beijing. Let's take a closer look now at the rules specially designed for the disabled. For disabled and able-bodied alike, rowing is a challenging sport that requires lots of energy. In paralympics, the length of the race is cut to 1,000 meters, as opposed to 2,000 meters in the Olympics, which means the start point is at the halfway point of the Olympic equivalent.