Paralympians are faking severity of their disabilities to win medals, athletes and officials claim

Paralympic athletes are exaggerating their impairments so as to win medals, in accordance to an investigation by means of the ABC’s Four Corners program.

Former athletes and officials have referred to as for basic reform, describing a tradition beneath which classification laws had been steadily bent and damaged, with few punishments for the ones ready to exploit a vulnerable device.

The scandal threatens the credibility of the Games, which is the arena’s third-biggest carrying tournament, producing tens of hundreds of thousands of greenbacks in income. 

High-ranking officials have expressed fear about ‘intentional misrepresentation’ of disabilities, with one mentioning that ‘the device does no longer paintings’ and any other announcing there have been ‘no repercussions for individuals who cheat’.

The former head of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), Xavier Gonzalez, mentioned circumstances of athletes dishonest throughout classification posed a transparent risk to the Paralympic logo, and an absence of sources made it tough to cope with the issue. 

Former head of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Xavier Gonzalez  has referred to as for reform within the wake of the stunning claims

Athletes are being accused of misrepresenting their stage of incapacity so as to make it extra critical than it in reality is so as to win extra medals

The IPC has been in price of implementing the principles of Paralympic classification however calls are being made for a brand new frame to put in force the principles.

‘Trying to do issues with classification to win a bonus isn’t a factor that the Paralympic motion can tolerate,’ Gonzalez mentioned.

Former leader classifier with the IPC and clinical director for the Australian Paralympic workforce Jane Buckley mentioned there are athletes, together with some from Australia, misrepresenting their skills around the globe to at the present time.

‘The stage of misrepresentation that began to happen after 2009 used to be slightly mind-blowing in some sports activities and specifically … swimming,’ Ms Buckley mentioned. 

‘I used to be instructed to flip a blind eye, to let it pass.’

She described the observe of athletes misrepresenting the severity of their incapacity used to be ‘nearly an inside of funny story’ within the Paralympic motion and her efforts to elevate the alarm used to be met with reluctance to take motion.

The Aquatics Centre on the London 2012 Paralympic Games. Swimming is one class the place misrepresentation of disabilities is allegedly rife, in accordance to a former medial director with the Australian Paralympic workforce

The maximum notorious example of dishonest on the Paralympics got here when Spain fielded a males’s basketball workforce and not using a disabilities on the tournament in Sydney in 2000.

Fernando Martin Vicente, the previous head of the Spanish Federation for Mentally Handicapped Sports, used to be discovered responsible of fraud after presiding over the scandal.

The tale broke in November 2000 when Carlos Ribagorda, a member of Spain’s gold medal-winning intellectually handicapped basketball workforce in Sydney, claimed that he and different athletes in classes equivalent to monitor and box, desk tennis and swimming weren’t mentally poor.

‘Of the 200 Spanish athletes at Sydney a minimum of 15 had no kind of bodily or psychological handicap – they did not even move clinical or mental examinations,’ he wrote within the mag Capital simply days after the Paralympics ended.