Olympic standard meddling

Amidst apparent secrecy surrounding a decision to re-admit some people with intellectual disabilities to some Paralympic events, Peter White wonders if it isn’t time to put the athletes more in control

Sports administrators do somehow give you the impression that they’ve never cheered a goal, saluted a smash, or stood spellbound at the breaking of a world record. You wonder why they ever got involved in sport, since it only seems to be the rules, and the paperwork, rather than the result that turn them on.

I suppose after covering four Paralympics, I’ve just spent too long at what I obviously mistakenly thought was primarily a joyous sporting occasion, watching endless discussions about exactly how far a competitor could move their left arm, or precisely where their spinal lesion occurred, and whether that really disqualified them from being in this or that race or game.
Clearly, accurate classification in Paralympic sport is vital: what is not clear, is exactly why these debates should be had in the middle of an event, when these things should have been sorted out long before the starting-gun went off.

In Beijing alone, at least two medals had to be withdrawn after having been awarded, because classifications were deemed to have been wrong; and in one case, a wheelchair race was rerun following a crash. None of this is the fault of the competitors. They go to these events in good faith, expecting that the claims that the Paralympics are elite sport will mean that they will be run to elite standards.

One of the problems facing the Paralympics if it genuinely wants to be regarded as an elite event, is how difficult it is for the public to understand the number of classes there are in the same event; and how someone can cross a line first, yet not end up with the gold medal. The journalist’s role, I always thought, was to try to explain some of the murkier waters of the Paralympics, and try to shed a little light. However, having recently been in Kuala Lumpur, trying to follow the twists and turns of the debate over re-admitting athletes with intellectual disabilities into the Games, I was puzzled to find reporters, myself included, barred from debates, even the sessions which were advertised as open.

It seems to me that a little more democracy, taken for granted in almost any other areas of disability politics, needs to find its way into the Paralympics. Surely it’s time that the athletes who so often find themselves on the wrong end of some baffling decisions, should be taking a much greater part in bringing the show into the 21st century.