World Para Swimming (WPS), the international federation that presides over Paralympic swimming, announced new classification rules effective January 1st late last week.
Para swimmers are classified into various categories to even the playing field within each race. Each swimmer is classified as having either a physical, visual, or intellectual impairment, and undergoes physical, technical in-sport, and technical in-competition assessments to reach a proper classification.
The revisions will mostly affect the technical assessment portion of the classification processes.
“Para swimming, as Para sport in general, is evolving all the time, and so is the knowledge of the technical aspects of the sport,” said International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Medical & Scientific Director Peter Van de Vliet. “This resulted in a revised procedure for the technical assessment, making the water test a more objective and reliable assessment protocol.”
Para swimming has been marred in recent years by cases of intentional misrepresentation (IM). This is when an athlete intentionally makes their impairment seem more severe in order to be put into the wrong disability class.
Among the inconsistent and unusual testing results was that of Australian Maddison Elliot, who was classified as an S9 going into the 2015 IPC Swimming World Championships. Due to her limited ability to kick during her observation race, Elliot was reclassified an an S8. However, later in the meet, she improved upon her 100 back observation time by about eight seconds, thanks to a strong kick. Inconsistent cases like Elliot’s abound in elite para swimming.
New protocol effectively upheaves the technical assessment entirely. The Classification Advisory Group has developed a more comprehensive and objection classification process, tested extensively over the past year and a half.
While the exact details of the process will be illuminated at the upcoming WPS Sport Forum (date TBA), it essentially scores athletes by observing their “swimming behavior,” namely propulsion and drag. This is a shift from the past method, which simply entailed subtracting points from an athlete’s physical score based on a given impairment.
All athletes with physical and/or intellectual impairments will be reassessed after January 1st.
Athletes with intellectual impairments will undergo reclassification based on developments made at the IPC Classification Research & Development Centre at Leuven University in Belgium, which should result in more accurate tests in the Sport Cognition Test Battery.
Great to be asked to do an interview for news at ten about Para cheating ??
And some people on this thread denied the cheating was going on
Good on you Mark for taking a stand against the obvious and destructive IM that exists within para swimming. Hopefully your efforts will make some significant imapct on the devesating situation that is destroying what should be a magnificent platform for truely disabled athletes to perform at their very best and have their efforts rewarded in a fair and transparent competition. Feel like the athletes who play by the rules and with honesty will be pushed out due to so much IM, wont even be worth them turning up. Keep up the fight on behalf of so many swimmers and their families. The profile of IM needs to be kept at the forefront and brought to the attention of the… Read more »
Yes Patterson is a disgrace but why have IPC not done anything up to this point in time? Its ridiculous the amount of things she is getting away with. When will they do something.
Seems like Mark is the only person really trying make a difference and persure this very important issue, for the benefit off all para swimmers who are doing their best day in and out over many years and playing by the rules. Its shouldn’t be a system where ‘cheats prosper’, hard work and dedication and commitment should prosper.
A consistent theme keeps appearing, Patterson is a disgrace and it’s so obvious!
If a stand is not taken I’m sure the situation will continue to escalate
PFJ
Thank you but to be honest the personal cost has taken its toll on my daughter who has suffered with so called Swimming friends blocking her on social media
But at the end of the day I am doing this for those who sit and bitch but feel threatened if they come forward
Mark, Why would you not just share your evidence with everyone on an open source platform. Nowhere to hide out in the open.
Would love too but to be fair it’s taken me and a few others a long time to gather what we have.
It cost me a lot of money for me and my wife to visit the IPC in Bonn and present our evidence.
Only for them to break a promise, so I will send proof to anyone who requests it with a genuine e mail address or via Facebook.
To many people who post on this site have hidden agendas and hide behind fake names, I don’t work like that but after the 31st Oct it will all be available to read on HM Govt sub committee report
Hi Mark, I think that’s disgraceful that IPC didn’t support your travel when you had a meeting with them.
With all athletes set as confirmed or review status being changed to review as of 1/1/2018, IPC now need to get into setting classification events so that athletes can start to organise when they will be retested. Or did they forget about that?
I’m sure it’s nothing more than a diversion tactic, nothing will change and the Pattersons of this world will still prevail. However, let’s say they are serious then I wonder if they will hold special classification meet sessions in each region say at MMU, AIS, Colorado etc., due to the sheer volume of swimmers and relatively small pool of classifiers (who are all now level 4), like a region specific world para series. It could prove too costly otherwise if overseas travel is required, especially for the poorer NGBs. We also need to remember that the classifiers are volunteers, that’s a lot of unpaid leave. To me though it is about how they are going to properly observe drag &… Read more »
I was a Team GB Paralympic Swimming Coach between 1989 and 2003 working with mostly visually impaired swimmers. I was amazed how easy it was to bluff their way through the tests to get a lower classification. This is one disability that need serious consideration.
Steve send me any info you got
[email protected]
And, what no one is talking about is the eligibility testing of athletes with ID – beyond bad… fraud is more like it. check this out: http://www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/intellectually-disabled-paralympians-classification-controversy
They are opening Pandora’S box and giving everyone another chance to cheat. But everyone has Asked for this to happen so let them give it a shot. What I think should be part of the new rules is a complete review of the swimmers time progressions and then mandatory review for any swimmer who improves a swim by a certain % over their classification swims. Tully Kearny and Shelby Newkirk swam total garbage swims at their classification meets and later turned up much faster this year. This is the easy stuff to not only disallow but the swimmers should be suspended. Request for review due to medical is demonstrated by poor swimming performance over at least a one year time… Read more »
The problem is that the IPC are not going to find anything that they do not want to find. They demonstrated that in Rio, Sheffield and again in Indianapolis. I agree to a certain extent with Mark but only because the classing up of Elliott to S9 (for the 3rd time) and the S8 classification of Patterson simply does not make any sense and seriously exposes the credibility of the volunteer classifiers. Swimmers and staff are cheating at the first check point – medical documentation, and then at the second check point, medical testing yet the gurus of classification seem to think that they will then swim truly during technical testing & observation swim to allow them to observe and… Read more »
“The most obvious example of this was carried out by Australian Maddison Elliot”
Are you kidding? The time it took to medal at the 200m free at the s2 class “progressed” from 4:57 to 3:43 in 4 years. There are many more examples.
Of course Maddison Elliot is a cheater but this site seems to focus almost only on the s8 girls. Wonder why.?
Well come forward and provide me with the evidence and I will pass it on, the way to fight it is to join together