Adaptive Rowing and the Paralympics

IPC president Sir Philip Craven speaking at the Forum

The recent World Rowing Forum in Istanbul, Turkey brought adaptive rowing into the spotlight when Sir Philip Craven, President of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) spoke on the Paralympic Games experience.

Paralympic sport took off after World War II as a way to help rehabilitate injured soldiers. This subsequently developed into the desire for competition. Rome, 1960, was the first Paralympic Games and today it has grown to 24 sports including four winter sports with adaptive rowing the most recent addition to the summer sports.

At Beijing in 2008 adaptive rowing will be part of the Paralympic Games for the first time. ?I went and watched rowing at Athens,? said Sir Philip, ?I knew we wanted FISA as part of our family.?

Sir Philip acknowledged the main challenges for adaptive rowing will be in the classification code and bringing newer rowers into the sport.

Currently the classification code is not specific enough. It aims to place adaptive rowers into groupings so they race others with similar abilities, but there is a wide range within these categories. At present they are divided into three major groups:

1. Legs, trunk and arms (LTA 4+): this class races in a coxed four with a sliding seat and includes those with minimum disability. Rowers must have the ability to use a sliding seat with their legs for the stroke as well as trunk and arms. Fitting into this event includes amputees for example with one foot or missing fingers. It also applies to blind athletes, those with cerebral palsy (CP-ISRA), those with intellectual disabilities or a level of neurological impairment.

2. Trunk and Arms (TA 2x): raced in double scull this event has a fixed seat and no foot stretchers to increase fairness. Rowers must have the ability to fix their pelvis on the seat of the boat but do not have a sliding seat because of the loss of lower limbs function. This includes above and below knee amputation, neurological impairment, cerebral palsy (CP5) and quadriceps impairment.

3. Arms (A 1x): Raced in a fixed seat single scull, the boat will have a high enough back to the seat so as to strap the athlete and hence only the arms and shoulder blades move during rowing. The rower has no trunk function or minimal upper back function, cerebral palsy (CP4) or neurological impairment.

Fay Ho, the new chair of FISA’s Adaptive Rowing Commission, has the classification system at the top of her list with the goal to make the system as inclusive as possible.

?We want to refine the classification system,? said Ho. ?Widen the limits so as to encourage the 38 countries that agreed to the 2002 Seville Protocol (to support adaptive rowing) to participate.?

Ho plans for the classification system to be complete by January 2006 and before the 2006 World Rowing Championships in Eton there will be a classification test for all adaptive rowers to test their eligibility and confirm their status. The selected athletes will have to go to one international regatta prior to the World Rowing Championships for a workshop and hopefully, says Ho, also for racing. At present the Adaptive Rowing Commission is still finalising the selected regatta but they do know that it will not be possible at the Rowing World Cup races due to tightness of the schedule.

Ho is also working to increase participation in adaptive rowing as the quota for the Beijing Paralympics has been set at 96.

Ho plans to set up a qualification system to get into Beijing and envisages that it will follow rules similar to FISA’s Olympic qualification system. At present Ho is in Beijing along with FISA’s executive director, Matt Smith, reviewing plans for 2008.

Related Links
New chair for FISA’s adaptive rowing commission
Rowing included in 2008 Paralympic Games programme
Adapting to rowing blind

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