All Hallows Eve is a fitting day to find skeletons in the Paralympic classification cupboard. The government found no skeletons at a hearing that took place yesterday – but the meeting will haunt specific athletes for years to come.
The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has already investigated all the allegations of Para-athletes cheating the classification system brought forward by athlete-parent-lawyer Michael Breen (father of the Paralympic athlete Olivia Breen). They found that all classifications were rightly and fairly made. They vanquished Breen’s argument.
That was Britain investigating not just British athletes but those of opponent countries – athletes who are often beaten by Brits. They would benefit if Britain were found guilty. Yet Britain was not.
So I was shocked that the father of an athlete would so freely name his daughter’s direct competitors (no men were mentioned or athletes of other classifications) even after they had been cleared of cheating, divulging their medical status and names, without them being there to defend themselves. He was told not to do so multiple times by members of panel. Those are witch-hunt tactics, and the digital, culture, media and sport select committee knew it.
I’m a Paralympian, a writer and a scientist. I’ll try to explain where he’s got it wrong.
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He seems confused about how a learning difficulty could be seen as a physical disability. Open any good neuroscientific textbook. Learning difficulties (LD) such as Asperger’s, autism or developmental delay can all occur in a part of the brain that also deals with coordination, therefore impairing coordination as well as conversation. That’s not controversial.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a terror. The coordination impairment system is a different type of brain matter entirely, and the symptom range is a nightmare. Yet brave scientists have taken empirical measures as best they can. It is a work in progress, so we must let the science be done.
Breen’s daughter, Olivia, and I both have cerebral palsy (CP). People with LD and MS are grouped with us only when they involve similar activity impairments that have been rigorously measured, with a tool that removes all bias from the scientists, the athlete doing the test and the two other professionals overseeing the process.
This does increase the challenge for people with CP on the racetrack, because while the impairment differences are minimised by this process, they are not taken away completely. But it’s hard to see how this can be avoided without simply awarding everyone their own medal.
I have lost my UK Sport funding and my place on the squad. Yet I stand by the classification system that put me up against stronger women with MS and LD because the system is fit for purpose, and without it I would be racing myself, the only person with congenital CP in the T2 class.
The only way to solve this problem is by conjuring up more of me … and sadly human cloning is illegal. I am not humiliated by being beaten. In failure, I face the truth of my being as an athlete and it leaves me in a position from which I can only get stronger.
Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson said she did not think cheating was endemic within the system – although she said 10% of her informants brought up misrepresentation of disability issues. How many informants were there? Had she been a scientist she might tell us the number –say, 10 – so we would know if only one person had raised concerns of classification.
Did the 10% express general concerns, or were they owning up to cheating, or accusing their rivals? She didn’t say. What she did say was that although Great Britain had not yet achieved the gold-standard level of integrity in terms of classification, it would do so within a very short space of time.
Gold-standard tests are ones that are the most statistically valid. To get a validated impairment you do need to do multiple tests on a range of the population that you are investigating, and feed all the data through blind statistical measures.
That is why, starting in January 2018, scientists will be reclassifying all of the coordination impairment classes to ensure that you cannot trick or cheat with neurological disorders.
The classification room during competition is a rare space where we can relax and let our disabilities show without fear. The classifiers literally take my limbs into their hands and pull them and measure them, drawing angles and getting second opinions. What they’re doing is grounded in rigour.
More work always needs to be done, so more science is what classification needs. It definitely does not need an overhaul that would bury scientific study under prejudiced paperwork, creating committees where innocent individuals are named and shamed.
• Hannah Dines is a Rio 2016 Paralympian, physiologist, sportlover, trike rider and freelance writer