Paralympics reinstate intellectually disabled athletes

The General Assembly of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) voted to re-include athletes with an intellectual disability (ID athletes) into the Paralympic Games last week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The Paralympic Games were first held in 1960 in conjunction with the Rome Olympic Games. After the 2000 Sydney Paralympic Games, intellectually disabled athletes were indefinitely suspended due to some dishonest classifications of ID basketball athletes. With the re-inclusion, ID athletes will have the chance to compete again at the 2012 London Paralympic Games.

Already adaptive rowing has taken steps in this direction with the addition in 2009 of ID athletes able to compete in their own coxed four event, the ID4+. At this year’s World Rowing Championships in Poznan (POL), Hong Kong China and Italy entered crews in the newly created mixed coxed four for the intellectually disabled (LTAID4+).

The re-inclusion of ID athletes in the Paralympic Games will take a number of steps. The first step is a process of classifying the athletes as being intellectually disabled. Medical files will need to be submitted to the INAS-FID International Eligibility Committee for review and approval. INAS-FID is the International Federation for sport for athletes with an intellectual disability. The INAS-FID committee will then decide whether the athlete is ‘eligible’ for competition in events for intellectually disabled athletes.

Once that is decided, the athlete would then be tested by a classification panel, in the case of rowing, the panel will be appointed by FISA, the International Rowing Federation. The testing would focus on ‘sports intelligence’ so tests will be carried out with relevance to rowing. The exact nature of this test is still being worked out and the FISA Adaptive Rowing Commission is working closely with the IPC on this test.

The IPC press release stated, “ID athletes will from now on be eligible to compete at the discretion of the International Federation being operationally ready with the classification system.”

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