This link has been bookmarked by 1 people . It was first bookmarked on 16 Oct 2008, by Wisely.
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16 Oct 08
Wisely"This year, passions ran as high at the officials' cocktail parties as they did on the track as international delegates debated a controversial question: just how badly off does an athlete need to be to be eligible to compete at the Paralympics?
The debate arose from a push to cut the least disabled events from the Games program. Under the proposal, track and field athletes with lower arm amputation and mild cerebral palsy would have to take their chances in able-bodied competition."-
In Athens, for example, there was a classification scandal surrounding two tall Tunisian midgets.
The Tunisians were included in throwing events for dwarfs, as there were not enough midgets to justify an event of their own. Classifiers decided that the requirement for competition would not be dwarfism, but height.
The midgets were slightly taller than the dwarfs. They could also fully extend their arms, as midgets' bodies are proportional and dwarfs' are not. The Tunisians broke world records, and the dwarfs were furious.
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At the Sydney Games, a group of Spaniards pretended to be intellectually disabled to enter the basketball competition, hoping to claim a cash reward for gold medals that had been offered by the Spanish Government.
As a result, intellectually disabled events were dropped from Athens and Beijing. They will be revived in London, much to the disapproval of physically disabled athletes who believe the inclusion of the "IDs" will confuse the Games with the Special Olympics.
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In Beijing, Australia's Heath Francis, who was seven when he caught his forearm in a meat mincer 20 years ago, won gold in the 100 metres, 200m and 400m. He is in the T46 class for athletes with a single above-elbow amputation and runs with an artificial arm to improve his balance. But under the new guidelines, that might not be enough of a disability.
"For sprinting, the upper body is as important as the lower body," Francis said. "When you look at Olympic runners, their arms are almost as big as their legs. The strength of your upper body determines the speed of your legs."
Able-bodied athletes do heavy weight training, but Francis cannot do most of it. "You try to modify them and make the best of it, and I'm lucky that [my coach] thinks laterally, but it's still not as good as the exercises I could do with two arms.
"That then translates onto the track, about how much power and force I can generate with my legs. I'm restricted with the strength in my arms."
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Occasionally, athletes with disabilities may have an edge over their able-bodied counterparts. The South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius was initially banned from able-bodied competition because of the extra bounce from his carbon prosthetics. That decision was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, although Pistorius did not qualify for the Olympics.
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