North East athletes are part of Team GB Para-Curling
The opening ceremony of the Paralympic Winter Games begins later
For the first time ever, English athletes have been selected alongside Scottish ones in the Para-Curling Team GB.
Jason Kean from Newcastle is one of the athletes taking part. He was injured in a motorcycle accident in 2021.
He said: "I would like to bring some gold back to Tyneside. That is the plan. We've had some good successes, you know. I really am there to win, you know. I'm not just there to take part. I really, really do think that me and Jo can do really well out there and bring something back to Newcastle and hopefully it's the gold variety.
"I'll be deadly honest, it was pretty much close to not wanting to be here anymore in the dark times, and meeting everyone and curling and getting involved in the sport. I would massively like to promote it to anyone that's got a disability because the lads and lasses have shown us how to live a life in a wheelchair. The sport itself has proven to us that I can do anything I want within the chair.
"The sport itself has massively changed my life, and it's proved to me as well that my life is worth something. It's also proved as well that I can do anything that I want. It's just a little bit different. But we are still the same people that we always were. Just my legs don't work anymore, you know, so it gives me everything to get up for in the morning. It's brilliant."
Another athlete is Stewart Pimblett from Northumberland who was involved in a road accident when he was 9-years-old, resulting in a spinal cord injury.
He said: "I'm honoured, if I'm honest, to be selected for the Paralympics. I feel like it's a long time in waiting. Broke my back in 1978 in a road traffic accident when I was nine years old. I think it's made me who I am today, to be honest.
"I wanted a new challenge, and I found the sport of wheelchair curling and fell in love with it. Then I decided, once I started, I thought, how can I curl internationally? There wasn't an England team. Then I was one of the founder members that set up the English squad.
"I'm a proud Britain. I've always wanted to get to the Paralympics, and I feel like this could be my last chance, but I'm certainly ready to show the world what I can do."