Mat Hotho sits down with Aaron Trent, a former para cyclist who placed second and third at the UCI Para-Cycling World Championships in 2009 and spent two and a half years as a resident athlete at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. Aaron has hemiplegic cerebral palsy affecting his left limbs which makes for a perfect conversation to kick off CP Awareness Month in March

They dig into what it actually takes to compete at the international level with a physical impairment: the bike modifications Aaron had to engineer from day one, the experience of living and training full-time at the OTC, and the grind of building toward a Paralympic qualifying standard. A significant portion of the conversation centers on classification — how it works in para cycling, what the process looks like in front of a panel, and what happened when the CP classification categories were restructured in 2010 and Aaron found himself competing against below-knee amputees. His take is candid: classification is the reason para sport exists, and it's an ongoing effort to make it more fair.

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