‘Mind-blowing’ numbers of Paralympians are FAKING the severity of their disabilities to make them look worse than they really are so they can win medals, athletes and officials claim
- Investigation claims problem is rife worldwide
- That includes Australian athletes, particularly swimmers
- Calls for reform to improve classification system
Paralympic athletes are exaggerating their impairments in order to win medals, according to an investigation by the ABC’s Four Corners program.
Former athletes and officials have called for fundamental reform, describing a culture under which classification rules were regularly bent and broken, with few punishments for those prepared to exploit a weak system.
The scandal threatens the credibility of the Games, which is the world’s third-biggest sporting event, generating tens of millions of dollars in revenue.
High-ranking officials have expressed concern about ‘intentional misrepresentation’ of disabilities, with one stating that ‘the system does not work’ and another saying there were ‘no repercussions for those who cheat’.
The former head of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), Xavier Gonzalez, said cases of athletes cheating during classification posed a clear threat to the Paralympic brand, and a lack of resources made it difficult to address the problem.
Former head of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Xavier Gonzalez has called for reform in the wake of the shocking claims
Athletes are being accused of misrepresenting their level of disability in order to make it more severe than it really is in order to win more medals
The IPC has been in charge of enforcing the rules of Paralympic classification but calls are being made for a new body to enforce the rules.
‘Trying to do things with classification to win an advantage is not a thing that the Paralympic movement can tolerate,’ Gonzalez said.
Former chief classifier with the IPC and medical director for the Australian Paralympic team Jane Buckley said there are athletes, including some from Australia, misrepresenting their abilities around the world to this day.
‘The level of misrepresentation that started to take place after 2009 was quite mind-blowing in some sports and particularly … swimming,’ Ms Buckley said.
‘I was told to turn a blind eye, to let it go.’
She described the practice of athletes misrepresenting the severity of their disability was ‘almost an inside joke’ in the Paralympic movement and her efforts to raise the alarm was met with reluctance to take action.
The Aquatics Centre at the London 2012 Paralympic Games. Swimming is one category where misrepresentation of disabilities is allegedly rife, according to a former medial director with the Australian Paralympic team
The most infamous instance of cheating at the Paralympics came when Spain fielded a men’s basketball team with no disabilities at the event in Sydney in 2000.
Fernando Martin Vicente, the former head of the Spanish Federation for Mentally Handicapped Sports, was found guilty of fraud after presiding over the scandal.
The story broke in November 2000 when Carlos Ribagorda, a member of Spain’s gold medal-winning intellectually handicapped basketball team in Sydney, claimed that he and other athletes in categories such as track and field, table tennis and swimming were not mentally deficient.
‘Of the 200 Spanish athletes at Sydney at least 15 had no type of physical or mental handicap – they didn’t even pass medical or psychological examinations,’ he wrote in the magazine Capital just days after the Paralympics ended.
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