How categories for para-athletes are worked out
The Gold Coast Commonwealth Games is being widely applauded for its integrated para-sport program.
If you are a person with a disability who has been inspired to take up a sport, first you need to be classified.
UQ researcher and classification expert Dr Emma Beckman said this involves athletes being put through physical tests, having their medical records examined, and then being assessed by a panel to determine which class they will compete in.
"The job of that panel is to assess the impairment of the athlete and look at how much it impacts on their ability to perform their event," Dr Beckman said.
"They do that through the best evidence that we have available, so some clinical impairment tests, some novel motor tasks.
"In the case of running, they might also get them to do some practised drills like high knees and skipping and that sort of thing.
"And then they get them to actually perform their activity to see how their impairment impacts on their sport performance."
Different disabilities can be in same sport classification
Dr Beckman said classifying athletes was different for every sport.
She said depending on the sport, athletes with seemingly different disabilities could be put in the same class but that sport specificity was very important.
"If you look at a sport like swimming, the contribution of the arms is going to be really important, versus a sport like running where it's predominately a lower body activity," Dr Beckman said.
"Swimming has a variety of different impairment types in the same race, so what they're really looking at is trying to make equivalence between different disability types.
"So they're essentially suggesting that certain impairments may have approximately the same type of difficulty in a race as another impairment.
"Whereas in athletics, races are impairment specific — you've got athletes who have impairments to muscle strength — they all compete together.
"And if you've got athletes with conditions like cerebral palsy, which impact on coordination and active range of motion and strength, they all compete together as well."
'I'd never seen myself as having a disability'
Melissa Tapper, 28, who is currently competing at the Commonwealth Games, was classified into Class 10 for table tennis in 2009 when she was 19.
Prior to that, she had only competed in the able-bodied competition.
"When I was first approached about para-sport I was a lot younger and at that point I'd never heard of the Paralympics, I'd never seen myself as having a disability — I didn't know there was another whole world out there," Tapper said.
"But when I got classified I was in Jordan and just being there and seeing what the Paralympics is all about, especially table tennis, is what got me hooked on it."
Tapper became the first Australian to compete at an Olympics and Paralympics in the same event in Rio 2016.
She is currently competing in both the able-bodied and para table tennis events at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.
"I'm so grateful and privileged to have been able to do what I've done and that's because of sport, and a lot of it because of para sport," she said.
"I've got to travel the world and learnt a lot about myself, and a lot about others — I'll be forever grateful."
Potential athletes can contact their relevant sporting bodies to find out when and where they can go to be classified.
[contf]
[contfnew]
ABC .net
[contfnewc]
[contfnewc]
