Classification in Paralymics

Through the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), Paralympic sport has developed a classification process whose purpose is to support sporting excellence while providing equitable competition. Classification makes sure that an athlete's impairment is genuinely relevant to performance in the chosen sport and that she or he competes fairly against others.

According to the IPC, classification serves two roles: first, to determine who is eligible to compete; and second, to group athletes for competition. The minimum eligibility requirement is an impairment that limits the athlete's ability to take part, and the impairment must be permanent in nature.

Classification Process

Classification for Paralympic sport generally has three or four steps:

• the first step is usually a medical assessment;
• the second is a functional assessment, which has two parts — observing the athlete first in training and then in competition.

A number of people take part in the process besides the athlete, including individual classifiers, medical classifiers, technical classifiers, a chief classifier, a head of classification, a classification panel and a classification committee.

Who does what. A medical classifier reviews the athlete's medical records and supporting documentation of the impairment. A technical classifier observes how that impairment actually affects movement and technique in the specific sport, since the same medical condition can limit a swimmer and a wheelchair-basketball player very differently. Together they decide eligibility and assign a sport class — a short code grouping athletes with a broadly similar degree of activity limitation for that sport, such as the S-classes used in Paralympic swimming or the T/F classes used in athletics for track and field events respectively. A chief classifier and head of classification oversee consistency across a whole competition, and a classification committee hears any appeal against an assigned class.

Why this matters. Without classification, the athlete with the least severe impairment in any event would almost always win, making competition one-sided and predictable. Classification exists precisely so that medals are decided by skill, training, tactics and mental focus — not by the differing degree of disability among competitors. …