The entire paralympic games baffles me. Injuries which cause handicaps are incredibly diverse. The winner will be the one with the injuries that cause the least amount of disruption to their physical capabilities. I applaud the athletes who refuse to let tragic circumstances get in the way of the enjoyment of their sport, but having a level playing field in the Olympics is about who has the most performance out of a set of extraordinary but roughly equal human beings. It seems hard to get that same level of equality in the paralympics.
Does anyone have any insight into how they match competitors to ensure a level playing field? Would someone with a normal heart rate increase ever be matched against someone with a spinal injury preventing normal heart rate increase, which would basically require this kind of pain training?
I raced paracycling for a few years. I was 2nd a nationals once, but never good enough to make it to the paralympics.
There are lots of categories. It's changed slightly now, but when I raced there was C1 - C5 for cyclists, T1 - T3 for tricyclists and H1 - H4 for hand cyclists. So that's 12 categories for each men and women in cycling. I needed to be evaluated twice by physiotherapists for strength, range of motion, etc. Then I was placed in a category. Obviously you want to be put in the lowest possible category for your disability. Lots of shady stuff goes on, faking additional disability etc. You can lodge a protest against other athletes if you think they are in the wrong category.
As I understand it now, they've reduced the number of medals given out, so instead of each category having a medal, each category has a standard speed, and the athlete that beats the standard by the greatest percentage wins. Other sports still have medals for each category but cycling went away from it due to not enough athletes per category. Swimming probably has the most athletes.
Neurological
Fair to normal
- Major and minor neurological signs
- Minimally affected diplegic with spasticity grade 1 or 1+
- Truly ambulant hemiplegic with spasticity grade 1 or 1+
- Monoplegic and minimal athetoids
- Possible loss of function by uncoordinated hands or one leg
Co-ordination
Fair to normal
- Very slight signs of inco-ordination on the bike (not normal function)
Abilities
- Fair to normal (0-2 points): mostly functional but not normal, major and minor
signs
Amputation, Impairment as described in 2b 2 “fair to normal”
- Single amputation AE, with or without prosthesis, no functional grip (54 points)
- Single amputation BE with the use of a prosthesis
Minimal disability: Amputation of all fingers and thumb (through MCP) or
amputation of more than half foot (forefoot). In the case of a single AE-, BE-
amputation or a single upper limb dysmelia, the minimal impairment is met if all
fingers and the thumb of one hand is missing through the MCP joint or other
impairments who are equivalents, without a functional grip. As a proof of the loss
of functional grip, the affected athlete will not be able to operat
Whenever I've played [low level amateur] sport it's not, for me, primarily been about beating the other guy it's been about performing in a way I can be proud of. Sometimes you win but the other guys beats you. Sometimes you lose but beat the other guys.
Better competition generally raises your game and so I've found that my best games have more often than not been against better teams who usually get the higher score.
Perhaps [some] paralympians share a similar view of sporting achievement?
It's not clear to me that the inequality of post-injury physical abilities in the paralympics is substantially different from the the inequality of innate physical abilities in the olympics. In both cases, a good portion of what competitors are measuring is "the playing field", where the playing field is their bodies. The rest is discipline, means to train, and psychology.
In this case, the level playing field between Olympic athletes is that they have all four limbs and normal (or above) coordination and muscle capabilities. In the paralympics, I would consider a level playing field to be one where all the athletes were injured or disabled in a similar fashion. If one athlete is able to automatically raise his/her heart rate while the rest cannot, this is not a level playing field.
Although it is an inspiring story to see athletes at a disadvantage even considering their competition in the paralympics still out there training hard, focusing on their personal goal, and succeeding where their fate has previously told them they cannot.
I think you're missing my point, which is that the performance range of people with "all four limbs and normal (or above) coordination and muscle capabilities" is at least as great as the performance range of people with diverse injuries.
So although it may seem orderly to you in the abstract, it's pointless and arbitrary to organize the paralympics based on type of injury if you're simultaneously allowing a much greater range of abilities to compete in the olympics.
If you really care that much about controlling for physical ability, you need to sort people based on some kind of meaningful sport-specific measure which more reliably segregates people's capabilities regardless of age, gender, injury, etc. But injury type (and for that matter gender and age) are extraordinarily poor proxies which in practice often prevent people from competing against their physical peers.
This is a difficult issue. I've worked with blind skiers in California and Utah. The categories for "VI" visually impaired are simply high partial vision, low partial and total loss (B3 thru B1). So competitors with extremely restricted foveal vision (central point of focus) are there with others with complete field of vision and very low contrast.
The B1's compete with blackout materials in their goggles to ensure that they really are B1's.
There's the usual issues that certain national adaptive sports federations are incredibly well funded, like Spain's, which is/was fed by the national lottery.
Does anyone have any insight into how they match competitors to ensure a level playing field? Would someone with a normal heart rate increase ever be matched against someone with a spinal injury preventing normal heart rate increase, which would basically require this kind of pain training?