Episode 24: Paralympic classification

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0:00 Carers Queensland announcement:  Getting started with your first National Disability Insurance Scheme plan?  Get off to a strong start with Carers Queensland’s free workshop Using Your NDIS Plan.  Learn how to use your funding, work with service providers and use the myplace portal.  Find out more, check for events coming up near you, and book your spot online at carersqld.com.au. You can also call us on 1300 999 636. 

0:35 Voiceover:  Choice and Control, a podcast celebrating people with disability brought to you by Carers Queensland, NDIS Local Area Coordination Partner in the Community. 

Ever wondered how the Paralympic classification system works?  For instance, swimmer Scooter Patterson competes in the S3 competition. The S stands for swimming, specifically freestyle, butterfly and backstroke.  Breaststroke is SB, the medley is SM.  Then there’s T for track, F for field, you get the idea.   

The number reflects the nature of the athlete’s disability and how it affects their performance in their chosen sport.  It’s a way of making sure athletes are competing against others with similar challenges so the final result doesn’t come down to their disability, but their skill, their training, their strategy, the things professional athletes spend years refining. 

Generally, the lower the number the more severe the disability.  Going back to Scooter Patterson, S3 athletes have physical disability affecting all four limbs.  That could mean things like quadriplegia, quadriplegic cerebral palsy or multiple limb difference.  But there are often fewer athletes in those classifications with the smaller numbers and that means there might not be enough people, from enough different countries, to make their competition viable.  Head coach of the Australian Paralympic swimming team Brendan Burkett explains: 

2:00 Brendan Burkett:  Every category is subject to a viability, like because it’s a competition there needs to be a number of competitors.  And they make additional allowances in those more severe classes, which is good because it’s definitely harder if you have a severe impairment to get down and do some form of exercise let alone train and compete.  So you know I mean the differences are in a higher class, like a less impairment profile.  The rule to make it a fair competition is there’s got to be at least six swimmers, and no more than two from each country, so if you don’t have enough of those competitors that event doesn’t go ahead.   

For the lower classes they’ve broadened it out, it can be five swimmers and it can be three from a country, yet they’re still trying to, they’re facilitating and supporting and making allowances for those lower classes – I say lower in terms of their number – so that they can compete.  But they’ve got to get that balance between, it’s got to be, it’s a competition so there needs to be a viable competition but also encourage and support areas that do it harder. 

3:10 Voiceover:  Dr Iain Dutia is a physiotherapist, a researcher with the University of Queensland and a parasports classifier.  He says it’s a very complex system, it varies from sport to sport, and it’s constantly evolving. 

3:25 Iain Dutia:  The classification system in Paralympic sport is quite complex and it’s still evolving over time, so there’s still a lot of research around the world going into developing evidence based classification systems.  Each sport has its own classification system, and within those systems the aim is to try and minimise the effect of impairment on performance, so the athlete that wins shouldn’t be the one with disability that causes the least amount of difficulty in the sport it should be the best athlete. 

In classification we have athletes with more complex and severe disabilities whose impairments cause a lot of difficulty in that sport, and we’ve also got at the other end of the spectrum athletes with disabilities that cause relatively minor difficulties in their sport.  So what we’re seeing in some sports is perhaps a declining number of athletes with more complex disability at the elite level at the Paralympic Games, but it does tie into participation because to have events at the elite level you need athletes.  I guess from the IPC’s perspective we need to have competitive events at the elite level, and we need lots of athletes at the grass roots level competing around the world to develop that level of competition. 

So really to fill up those events for people with more complex disability, we have to start with participation around the world and of course people with more complex disability they face greater barriers to participation than those with less severe impairment.  They need, you know, fundamental assistance with activities of daily living, so things like getting dressed, getting to training or out in the environment, transport, getting changed, getting into facilities, they need assistance with their training, they need expertise to help manage their disability during sport and all the challenges that come with kind of intensive training.  So that’s difficult, and it’s expensive, and we don’t have a huge amount of research to evaluate what the effect of that is and how to best help manage athletes with complex disability who have high support needs.  

 So in a nutshell we’ve got quite a bit of work to do to develop sport for athletes with high support needs out in the world. 

5:55 Fiona Stutz: Absolutely, because I understand at the next Paralympic Games they’re not going to have as many categories for those with more severe disabilities, is that right? 

6:03 Iain: In some sports, in some events, yes.  In swimming for people with physical disabilities there’s ten classes, one to 10, so classes one to three are for those with the most complex disabilities, for athletes with high support needs.  At 2024 it looks like there’s not going to be any events for S1s, with the most severe impairments, and only a few for S2s, and they will all be for male athletes.  So yeah, there’s a gender issue here as well with participation for females in sport who have high support needs. 

Like I say the reason, that’s happened is because of an event viability rule so to be included in the Games.  Events have to meet certain viability criteria that are set by the International Paralympic Committee.  A couple of those events in the lower classes, for athletes with high support needs, they don’t meet the criteria so they’ve been removed from the program for Paris 2024.  But, do you see how that doesn’t help?  You have low participation so they don’t meet the criteria, so if you remove the event from the Games then you’re actually compounding the issue, because that kind of competition helps to drive participation.   

Without the event in the Games you’re really not going to get athletes into those classes and participating around the world, because the Games really dictates how funding is sent through sporting systems and how countries prioritise where they invest.  Nations aren’t going to invest in athletes with high support needs without the events at the Games.   

The problem is you can’t apply the same rules to all people with disabilities when it comes to inclusion, because inclusion is hard for some more than others. It’s an issue of equity which is hard to achieve even for these international global sporting organisations who have done so much great work to include people with disabilities.  I just fear that perhaps people with more complex disability are getting a little bit left behind because of how difficult it is, and the unique supports that are needed to get them into sport. 

8:18 Fiona: What’s the solution? 

8:20 Iain: I think there’s a few things we need to do.  So one, I think we need to protect those events at the Games.  I really believe the integrity of the Paralympic Games relies on maintaining but also increasing representations of athletes with high support needs at the Games, so that it doesn’t become the Games for the least impaired.  And we also need programs, we need grass roots programs and we need them to be evaluated.   

This ties into health care systems as well, so we need to find out exactly how good parasport can be for people with disabilities. We know it’s good, but exactly what good does it do?  What are the extent of the benefits?  How do they work?  How do we actually include people with complex disability in sport?  And I mean the details of overcoming the barriers to participation.  You know, transport, access, we need those described and shared.  That’s the way forward. 

9:18 Carers Queensland announcement: Work isn’t just money in the bank.  It’s learning new skills, facing challenges, and making a difference to the world around you.  If someone in your life is leaving school soon, find out what support’s available and explore options for the future in Carers Queensland’s free workshop Let’s Talk About Work.   

Find out more and check for events coming up near you, and book your spot online at carersqld.com.au.  You can also call us on 1300 999 636. 

9:50 Voiceover: Swimmer Rachel Watson competes in the S4, SM4 and SB3 competitions.  She represented Australia in Rio in 2016 and in Tokyo this year and holds the current world record for the S4 50 metre freestyle.  Rachel says she’d love to be part of the Aussie team in Paris, but it comes down to whether her classification is in the competition. 

10:13 Rachel Watson: Yeah, I’d love to.  Obviously I don’t know yet what events are on offer for my classification.  That is always a big deciding point for most of the athletes with a physical impairment, because unlike the Olympics where they have every event offered, the Paralympics don’t.  And with lower class athletes like myself, they don’t have as many events compared to higher classifications, so more physically able people.   

So it’s going to be difficult to know if my main event and my qualifying event is offered on the program.  If it is, I definitely want to go to Paris.  If the organisers take it off the program then it will be much more difficult to make the team, even though I’d switch and try and do a different event it may be more difficult to qualify.  But it’s definitely a goal to be there in Paris in three years and try and do well at another Games, that would be pretty exciting. 

11:16 Fiona: And how would you feel if your category isn’t offered at the next Paralympics? 

11:21 Rachel: Oh, very disappointed, you know? I feel like there’s not a lot of opportunity for lower classed athletes, so the athletes who have more of a physical impairment.  You know, they’re going to race slower, there’s not going to be as many people in the race, so for the public it’s not seen as interesting.  It would be very disappointing because the Paralympics is meant to be about everybody, including those with higher physical impairments and higher support needs.   

It’s obviously a decision that would be out of my control, but I would hope that going off the success of the last two games I would hope that they would continue the event.  But you just never know.  You just never know what could happen. 

12:10 Voiceover: Having said all this, it’s important to remember the incredible good the Paralympic movement has brought to the world: for athletes with disability, for the broader disability community to see ourselves represented and celebrated on the world stage.  And for the mainstream community to see people with disability as strong and capable, to recognise what we can do and what we can achieve.   

And in the meantime, Dr Dutia says the classification system will continue to be a work in progress. 

12:38 Iain: I would want to highlight the good that the Paralympic movement has done.  It’s very easy to be critical about excluding people with complex disability, but it’s difficult and it’s, relatively, there’s new problems related to the way the Games are now.  It’s not an easy fix. 

I also want to make sure that we’re giving the movement credit, because the good that it does for millions of people around the world and the exposure that it brings for people with disability can’t be understated. 

13:12 Voiceover: Thanks for joining us at Choice and Control, a Carers Queensland podcast.  For more information about the National Disability Insurance Scheme or Carers Queensland, contact us online at carersqld.com.au.  You can call us on 1300 999 636 or head to Facebook and look for Carers Queensland NDIS. 

Mentioned in this episode 

• Paralympics Australia 
• Carers Queensland website 
• Carers Queensland upcoming events and workshops 
• Carers Queensland NDIS on Facebook 

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