Classifying adaptive rowers goes to South Africa

What have a Croat, an Englishman and the South African Highveld got in common? The answer is adaptive rowing. More specifically, this entailed the classification of adaptive athletes for international and national competition.

For the first time in South Africa a classification workshop was held by the International Rowing Federation, FISA’s, international classifiers. The purpose was to enable South Africa to expand the number of local classifiers. At present there are only two rowing classifiers in the country and both hold national technical classifier status with FISA. There are no medical classifiers.

Held in Johannesburg, Simon Goodey and Tomislav Smoljanovic of FISA’s adaptive commission, presented the course. South African national classifier, Adrian Higgins was impressed with Goodey and Smoljanovic’s presentation, describing it as very entertaining and highly interactive.

“There were 11 trainee classifiers who numbered among them, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, coaches, rowers, officials and adaptive athletes,” said Higgins. Higgins attended the workshop to gain further experience prior to the international classification workshop in Munich this month.

The trainee classifiers came from the South African organisation for sport for the physically disabled (SASAPD) which organisers classifiers for all Paralympic sports.

A total of 14 athletes were classified into the three classes of legs, trunk and arms (LTA), trunk and arms (TA) and arms (A) for both national and international competition.

South Africa has already sent one adaptive crew to compete internationally. In the LTA4+ event they compete at the Rowing World Cup in 2007. The crew will be attending the Munich Rowing World Cup from 8 – 10 May, 2008 which is the last opportunity to qualify for the Paralympic Games in Beijing.

“The intention (of the workshop) is for the majority of athletes that were classified to compete internationally,” says Higgins. “The adaptive programme has only been running in South Africa since late 2005, so getting athletes to international competition level has been challenging in such a short time.”

Copy thanks to Adrian Higgins

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