“Intellectual ability” Paralympics 24 years on

[Newdoggointhehouse]

I know there’s been a lot of scandals around the Olympics, but this one around the Paralympics is not talked about enough. At Sydney 2000, Spain took gold by cheating in the “intellectual impairment” category for the basketball event. The story made international news, saw players with genuine talent in their sport denied and the two talented Spanish players who were not “ringers” stripped of their medals.

The real scandal I think is that 24 years on, international sporting organisations have still not given their (pretty much any?) time and thought on how to address their own failures in allowing genuine athletes to thrive on an international level and to stop cheaters cheating.

Therefore only three disciplines (swimming, table tennis, track and field) remain open in this category in the Paralympics.

The sportspeople involved and across other sports unwillingly retired from their sports with an abrupt end. The up and coming sportspeople of the time also had nowhere to go.

Our talent today, particularly in GB basketball, doesn’t have opportunities for really great athletes to progress.

There is a really good podcast on this https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-fake-paralympians-1-gold/id73802620?i=1000532255801

AIBU that 24 years is plenty of time to give talented people with learning disabilities the opportunity to compete on an international arena in sports they show genuine talent in?

They deserve their chance to shine and this should have been it, there are no other opportunities for the public to see people with intellectual disabilities compete in high level sporting competitions. I feel so sorry for any athlete robbed of a chance to compete due to cheating.

We have the special olympics still, I knew someone who competed for team gb for one of the past summer games.

We do and I know some competitors. I suppose the feeling from the athletes I know is that it just doesn’t carry the same kudos.

Special Olympics is great but it is designed not to be hyper competitive.

In the Paralympics, qualification is highly competitive and you compete against the most successful sportspeople with the same type and level of disability as you (apart from open categories).

In the Special Olympics, you qualify because of a disability, you are sorted into small groups, and you compete with people achieving at roughly the same level as you to keep a fairly level playing field.

The Paralympics are intended to showcase a sporting elite, like the Olympics. Special Olympics are designed to celebrate everyone who meets a minimum standard.

Both are valuable but they are very different events.

I think the Paralympic authorities felt intellectual disability would be the category most easily scammed. It’s hard to police if a country’s authorities are crooked enough to (I assume) issue bogus documentation to enable players with no impairment who are willing to put on an act to get a gold medal.

You can see there is a drive in some areas to have competitors badged as more severely disabled to get into a different category - there has been grumbles and complaints about this ongoing over several years, must be hard to sort out fairly to everyone's satisfaction.

When there’s high status gold medals at stake there will be a temptation to game the rules to either get in or get a prize - just look at the biological males (old, out of condition) shoehorning themselves into the female category because they’ve declared themselves eligible and the federations don’t have the integrity to say no.

It would probably be too time consuming for each sports governing body to do full checks on all participants. It's not like limb amputees or short stature which are visibly obvious, sight impairment and intellectual disabilities are measurable but can be "played up". (I've mentioned the short stature because the badminton is on)

But what has changed since then? It remains the most easily scammed category (and I know there is controversy regularly about athletes with physical disabilities being reclassified, and the physical categories can still be scanned to an extent) and therefore the one that threatens to undermine the whole organisation/ event. You can be able to get married and live independently, live what looks like a normal life, and compete in the intellectual impairment category. I do feel that intellectual impairment generally sits better in special Olympics. Accepting that some athletes are too high achieving for this, but not good enough for Olympics is a hard pill to swallow but I think it's the only real option.

I think I agree with pp that the Paralympics isn’t really the appropriate place for people with intellectual disabilities. It’s really for classifiable physical impairments, competed at the highest possible level. I’m not sure why a person with learning disabilities couldn’t, in theory, run as fast as someone without.

this page explains why athletes with intellectual disabilities are unlikely to perform at the same level as someone without: https://lexi.global/sports/athletics/track/t20

it’s not until you hear the ex athletes who are presenting that you realise how tactical athletics can be. Well I didn’t anyway!

Imagine if they had a special category at chess tournaments for people with physical disabilities instead of making accommodations! I think the real Olympics should cater for these otherwise fine athletes even if they’re a bit you know and leave the Paralympics to the physical disabled.

Personally I cannot see the appeal as a sportsperson to win in the "intellectually impaired" category when you know you shouldn't be. I mean how do you talk about that at parties.
"I got a gold medal at the Paralympics"
"I didn't know you're disabled"
"I'm not but I pretended to be intellectually impaired..."
Real kudos there!

I have two minds about it. Not all disabilities are represented in every sport. As someone who has a dd missing an arm, I'm always surprised what is and isn't available in her category. Running (which you'd think doesn't have too much disadvantage, it's balance is the issue) for example is. Tennis (which I play and missing a hand is quite a disadvantage) isn't. (but I believe deaf tennis is one that is very much up and coming, which again has less impact than missing an arm, certainly in singles)
There isn't enough time to do all in all categories, and every set of people with an impairment thinks that their impairment should have more categories ime.

I saw an article explaining why people with Down's syndrome are unlikely to be selected for that category (they normally have other physical impairments like low muscle tone) so you could say they're also being excluded.

Maybe the answer would be to have a third Olympics for intellectual impairments. And within that, have categories: Down's would be one. Perhaps other genetic conditions could be another, medical causes, and other. The first 3 would be easy to consider. The last would be the hardest.