One of the most important aspects of Para sport happens before athletes enter the field of play.
There are huge variations in the deficiencies and impairments that Para athletes have.
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“World Para Swimming has sport classes that address all of the IPC-identified eligible underlying impairments,” said Mike Edey, Swimming Canada’s Pathways and Domestic Classification Manager.
He then listed several of the conditions that the International Paralympic Committee has recognized.
· Short of stature
· Loss of strength
· Spinal cord injury or nervous malformation
· Demyelinating disease
· Polio
· Segment loss, like amputations
· Limb deficiency or a difference, like dysmelic (improperly formed limb)
· Loss of vision
· Intellectual functioning
Each of the impairments above, create functional limitations for Para athletes.
“We do have a functional classification system,” stated Edey.
He continued, “The attempt is to try and judge, given the swimmer’s eligible underlying health condition, that results in an eligible impairment, what their activity limitations are, within the sport of swimming, and how those are balanced against things like passive drag, when you know some part of the body cannot be positioned for a more advantageous static position.”
Functional impairments are grouped into different classifications, so that athletes whose limitations impact them similarly during their sport, compete together. This ensures that no athlete has an unfair advantage over the other competitors, in a race.
The IPC is responsible for governing five of the 29 Paralympic sports (Para athletics, Para ice hockey, Para powerlifting, Para swimming and shooting Para sport).
Functional limitations are sport specific. Para swimming has 14 classifications.
S1 to S10 are physical impairments.
S11 to S13 are visual.
S14 is intellectual.
Para Swimmer Assessment Process
First a physical assessment is done by a trained medical classifier. They are typically physiotherapists or doctors.
This physical examination is not done in the water. It's done in a controlled setting. It involves direct manipulation, for athletes who have a physical impairment.
If the physical assessment determines that the athlete has enough impairment to meet the minimal impairment criteria for the sport, the next step is a technical assessment, which measures swimming.
The technical assessment is done at the same time as the physical assessment, in a controlled environment.
There is a flowchart of skills that an athlete can be expected to be tested on. The panel can ask them for more skills.
They are evaluated, swimming in a lane of a pool. They can repeat what the assessment team requests, as much as they want.
If deemed necessary, the optional observation assessment is done in the first appearance event at a competition.
First appearance is a rule within the IPC’s general guidelines for classification.
If the classification panel requires an observation assessment, they cannot observe the athlete during multiple races.
They must observe and evaluate the athlete, during their first race, then make their final decision.
“In 2018, the tools for technical and the observation assessments got a little broader,” said Edey. He then gave an example to describe what he meant.
“Let's say you're looking at somebody's wrist in swimming. We measure wrist flexion, extension and ulnar deviation. So that’s three scores.”
Edey described this as the “wrist cocking motion, that is deviating the fingers from the wrist outside, toward the ulna [forearm bone].”
He elaborated further. “As you enter and now you're starting to pull, it's thought that the strength or the ability to control your ulnar deviation is what helps you maintain the propulsive surface of your hand, addressing the water, instead of slicing thumb down, or not being able to position your hand, where it would catch water.”
“On the bench, in the medical assessment, a medical classifier will measure each of those three planes of movement and give them a score between zero and five,” he continued, “for a grand total of 15 points.”
Edey explained additional details of the classification scoring system.
“In the water, the wrist also measures 15 points, but the joint gets a score from zero to five and then is multiplied by three. So in the bench, any score from zero to 15 inclusive is legal, but in the water, you can only get multiples of three.”
Edey stated, “That was a really big change in 2018.”
“World Para Swimming wanted to be clear, in 2018, that this was a change to try to make the technical assessments, where you have to assess the role of a joint through multi planar movements, but you don't get to isolate them, like you do on the bench, to make it hopefully more inter-tester reliable by scoring, what the technical classifier judged the joint to be, without having to distribute those points amongst the planes of movement that you just never actually get to see in the water, in a compound movement.”
Codes of Exception
If an athlete “has an eligible underlying health condition that results in more than the minimum impairment criteria for swimming, she'd come to classification, that would be measured in a physical assessment, assessed in the technical assessment, to ensure that it meets the criteria for sport,” explained Edey.
“Then she would be assigned something called a code of exception, because if you can't physically do something, we're not going to keep disqualifying you for it,” he continued. “The codes are set at classification.”
Edey then gave an example.
“We have all kinds of athletes who come into the sport with things like bilateral club foot or CP, that mostly affects a lower limb,” he explained.
“They can't turn their toes out for breaststroke. So the code of exception 12 applies only to breaststroke, and it allows the swimmer to perform leg drag or to show intent to do a kick for breaststroke, and then it just has to be a kick that isn't dolphin or flutter kick, and it's perfectly legal,” Edey continued.
“There's a minimum number of skills they [Para swimmers] need to demonstrate; all the kicks, all the strokes, all of the turns,” explained Edey.
He continued, “The hard part then, is actually determining if you're watching somebody swim this way or that way, is the stroke fault that you're seeing the result of the impairment that you saw on the bench or maybe their technique just isn't super well developed.”
At the international level, Para swimmers must have great technique, to be classifiable.
“That's where at the international level, if they don't think you swim well enough technically, they just can't assign you a sport class and you go home,” stated Edey.
He elaborated, “So domestically, we need to get swimmers into the sport fairly early. So there are an increasing graduation of technical expectations as swimmers grow and progress and are assessed at different levels, domestically, of which we have three.”
“We expect them to be exceptionally technically competent, which may be one of the things that's the biggest difference between Olympic and Paralympic swimming,” he continued.
Edey provided more granular detail.
“Para swimmers need to be able to demonstrate all the strokes, because when you're assigned a sport class, breaststroke gets its own sport class. Butterfly, backstroke and freestyle all share the same sport class.
So how do you assign the sport class if you can't demonstrate the three strokes in the sport class?”
A great deal of planning, careful analysis and the individual assessment of every athlete undergirds the high quality of competition and fairness that exists in the sport of Para swimming.
