PR1, W1, T51, F58, SL4, KL3, SM11.
This is not a test to pass an exam or unlock a door or a mystery out here.
However, you will be confronted with a string of letter and number combinations when you are in contact with the Paralympics currently being held in Paris. Amidst the games like the Olympics, it will only take one person to be the fastest man or woman over 100m but on the Paralympics for the same distance, there will be about 16 classes for men and up to 13 for women based on their disability.
This glossary will state the rationale of the various categories, which define who is qualified to participate in a sporting activity and how the athletes are segmented.
The letter and number combinations refer to different ‘classes’ for different sports depending on the extent of their impairment that hinders their activity (which ‘sport class’ they fall under).
According to the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), the purpose is to reduce ‘the effect of the impairment on the WPN’s performance falling so much that sporting prowess decides which athlete or team is going to emerge as the winner’. Maintaining the spirit of the competition is always of great value to the credibility of Paralympics.
How does it work?
Firstly, one needs to decide whether an athlete has a qualified impairment. From the IPC, it is lawful for any athlete with a desire to participate to have one’s ‘underlying health condition’ that leads to a ‘permanent eligible impairment’.
How are the impairments categorized?
Like the Olympics Games, Paralympic is limited to only persons with one of the 10 acceptable types of impairments. These are split into three categories: motor disabilities, which include impaired muscle power, impaired range of movement, limb deficiency, leg length difference, hypertonia, ataxia, athetosis and short stature; sensory impairments, particularly vision impairment; and mental impairment.
Not all Paralympic sports are available for all impairments. For instance, while athletics and swimming can be enjoyed by any eligible impairment, judo is reserved for vision-impaired athletes, whereas dressage contains a cross.
The process then is for the federation of each different sport to decide if the athlete has an impairment that meets the relevant event’s criteria and whether they have a minimum level of impairment that is acceptable. For instance, for the athletes of short stature, the sport prohibits the height or for the athletes of limb deficiency, the level of amputation. An athlete may fit into one criteria but not the other depending on his or her specialization.
How are the sport classes decided?
Athletics for instance, has more than 50 classes because many of its competitors represent the 10 categories of impairment. Others, including powerlifting, have just one: paralysis of the lower limbs or hips, which thus makes them unable to stand when weightlifting. There is no specific categorization that can be applied in every sport.
A sport class congregates athletes whose activity is equally restricted and thus those with dissimilar impairments might compete in the same games because theirs might lead to equal activity restriction. For instance, in wheelchair racing, athletes who have paraplegia, which is paralysis of the legs and lower body and those with amputated legs will be categorized in the same event.
Who decides an athlete’s sport class?
Physicians, physiotherapists, coaches, sport scientists, psychologists and ophthalmologists assess how the athletes’ impairments affect core, specific and protagonist tasks involved in the sport and personal performance.
Physical and technical evaluation and observation of an athlete in competition leads to the assignment of a sport class. But that classification may become last years only, now that athletes’ medical conditions may transform as well.
What do the letters and numbers mean in each sport?
Each classification has a letter that is usually the initial letter of the sport, normally followed by a number, e.g., T1, F1, BC1 and so on. Often, the smaller the number, the higher the degree of disability.
As a result, various classification systems can be defined depending on the type of sport.
For athletics, the numbers signify these impairments:
- 11-13: vision
- 20: intellectual
- 31-38: co-ordination
- 40-47: short stature, upper/lower limb competing with prosthesis or equivalent
- T51-54: wheelchair races
- F51-58: seated throws
- 61-64: lower limb competing with prosthesis
In swimming, S stands for butterfly, backstroke and front craw, SB for breaststroke, and SM for multi-swim events. This was decided from numbers 1-10 for physical disability, 11-13 for vision impairment and 14 for any instance of intellectual disability.
Then in wheelchair basketball and wheelchair rugby, every player is given certain points in terms of his impairment. The lower the number, the more the impairment and the team’s sum of on-court players must not exceed a certain value.
In blind football, all the players on the outside have to wear eyeshades, though the goalkeeper cannot be fully blind; in contrast, in goalball, all the players must wear an opaque mask and also an eye patch.
Judo, however, is only practiced for the visually impaired using a further division of the players into classes B1, for the blind, and B2-3 for the partially sighted, and then weight divisions.
What happens if an athlete intentionally misrepresents their classification?
They could give an offender a ban of a first offense for up to four years. Failing to tell the truth during an assessment to the classification panel, appearing at an evaluation in a manner that contravenes with competition or failing to disclose new medical conditions that may alter a person’s designated sport class is against the law.
