The Paris Summer season Paralympics are drawing to an in depth. Over the previous 10 days, greater than 1,000 athletes with disabilities competed in 164 completely different disciplines. Inspiring tales about overcoming adversity and celebrating variety stuffed the sports activities pages overlaying the occasion.
Certainly, the Paralympic Video games, held each 4 years, promise disabled athletes a platform the place dedication and talent, not their bodily situations, will outline their potential for victory. They’re supposed to make sure fairness and inclusion.
Nevertheless, once I naively launched into my journey as a Paralympic athlete, I used to be shocked to discover a system that usually accentuates disabilities somewhat than diminishes them. Whereas the Worldwide Paralympic Committee (IPC) touts advances in athlete inclusion and aggressive integrity, many athletes face a distinct actuality.
A faulty basis
When the Paralympics started in 1960, they centered totally on catering to World Battle II veterans with particular accidents. Competitions have been organized by sort of amputation or wheelchair use. These classes are nonetheless largely used 70 years later, with athletes grouped primarily based on their disabilities.
The intention is to create a degree taking part in subject by making certain that athletes compete in opposition to others with related capacity ranges. Nevertheless, this classification system doesn’t consider the huge spectrum of disabilities that presently exist on the video games.
I personally skilled the system’s shortcomings when officers, unable to categorise my distinctive set of disabilities, arbitrarily positioned me in a class initially meant for athletes with below-knee amputees, even if I’ve each legs.
It’s because my sport doesn’t have a qualifying class for athletes with impairments in all 4 limbs, which is my case. I used to be advised that the IPC had not anticipated that somebody with my degree of impairment would wish to compete.
Whereas my poor rating didn’t stop me from excelling in my subject, the identical can’t be mentioned for a lot of others.
This flawed system results in unfair competitors. It’s noteworthy that persistent illnesses and sophisticated disabilities, that are more and more frequent right this moment, are systematically oversimplified throughout classification.
Rivals with these situations merely don’t match into the present system that the IPC has established and continues to uphold. As a substitute, their disabilities are decreased to the closest match of amputation or spinal twine damage.
As well as, in some Paralympic sports activities, athletes with completely different disabilities are grouped collectively, as is the case in athletics and snowboarding. This could result in basically unfair competitions, corresponding to when a skier with a lacking hand competes in opposition to a skier with a lacking leg. In essentially the most excessive instances, absolutely sighted athletes compete in opposition to blind folks.
To appropriate this imbalance, the IPC adjusts competitors instances primarily based on qualification classes, within the hope of making fairness. Nevertheless, this methodology is way from efficient. It’s like attempting to stability a race between athletes by altering their ending instances after the very fact: it doesn’t actually replicate their skills or the challenges they face. The present system, regardless of good intentions, doesn’t present a really degree taking part in subject for all concerned.
In consequence, an athlete with a transparent benefit resulting from misclassification usually emerges because the winner in competitions.
Excessive danger, abuse and silencing
Globally, the issue is exacerbated by the excessive stakes concerned in Paralympic competitors, together with sponsorships and nationwide pleasure. Since 2018, Paralympic medal payouts in the USA have elevated by as a lot as 400 %. With important monetary rewards at stake, the strain to win leads some athletes to cheat. Not like in able-bodied sports activities, the place doping is the principle downside, Paralympic athletes can manipulate the classification system by exaggerating or faking their disabilities.
Whereas most athletes don’t benefit from the system and deserve their reward, dishonest does happen. For instance, Indian discus thrower Vinod Kumar, who received a bronze medal on the 2021 Summer season Paralympics, was subsequently disqualified for deliberately misrepresenting his disabilities with a view to compete in opposition to athletes with extra extreme disabilities. In 2017, British sprinter Bethany Woodward returned her silver medal from a group occasion, believing she had earned it unfairly as a result of a teammate had cheated in qualifying.
These well-known instances are simply the tip of the iceberg; many situations of dishonest go unchallenged. Distinguished athletes have repeatedly and publicly criticised the rating system, however to no avail.
For instance, after the 2022 Winter Paralympics in China, Staff USA’s star winter and summer season athlete Oksana Masters commented: “Misclassification had an enormous, large impression on athletes… It’s been a difficulty for a very long time and it hasn’t been addressed.”
However the overwhelming majority of athletes have remained silent, as those that dare to query or criticise the qualification system have confronted severe repercussions, together with threats of exclusion from nationwide groups and withdrawal of funding.
In 2016-17, an obligation of care evaluate in British sport discovered that British athletes who needed to talk out about dishonest in qualifying have been “bullied and harassed” into silence.
I’m additionally involved that expressing my considerations might have ramifications for my Paralympic profession, which is why I’ve determined to write down beneath a pseudonym.
Change is urgently wanted
I converse now as a result of this issues.
Many sports activities followers might not be capable of distinguish between the Paralympic Video games and the Particular Olympics, not to mention tune in to observe them. For others, it could simply be one other sporting occasion.
Nevertheless, for athletes with disabilities, the Paralympic Video games characterize a profound narrative of overcoming adversity and demonstrating human potential. When the integrity of this platform is compromised, it not solely impacts the athletes, however undermines a worldwide motion in direction of equality and recognition in sport.
The present IPC system implies that the least disabled athletes of their class win, whereas the others are destined to fail. This method advantages a couple of on the prime whereas harming the bulk. The IPC is simply too busy patting itself on the again to see the struggles of the athletes.
To save lots of the integrity of the Paralympic Video games, the system wants reform. Admittedly, it is a advanced activity that requires cautious consideration. Impartial oversight and enter from a various group of specialists, athletes and advocates are obligatory.
It’s important to introduce a clear and dynamic classification course of that evolves with medical and technological advances in incapacity. As well as, defending athletes who converse out in opposition to injustice is crucial to fostering an setting the place honest play is the very best precedence.
As an athlete who got here into this world hoping to transcend limitations, I name for a system that genuinely displays the resilience and variety of its opponents. As we come collectively to help our athletes, allow us to additionally advocate for fairness in all elements of their competitors. Solely then will the Paralympic Video games actually honour the athletes they intention to have a good time.
The views expressed on this article are these of the writer and don’t essentially replicate the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
