How are Paralympic Classifications Determined

Intro hey guys it's manager kylie and in today's video i'm going to share with you how the classifications work for the paralympic games [Music] so today i'm going to go through how the classifications for the paralympic games work the paralympic games are played by athletes with disabilities so the one key thing for the paralympics is trying to make them fair and classifications is a big way to do that and today i'm going to go through how those classifications work and all the details behind whether you are able to participate in the paralympic games and if your disability is one that is eligible for your sport but if you guys are interested in more sports administration videos just like this definitely subscribe button turn the bell so you get notified every time i upload as i post a new video every single wednesday at 2pm eastern time and we're gonna dive in to see how these classifications work and as i go through Links this video if you're interested in any more information on this i will have a direct link at the top of my description to the paralympic website going through all this criteria on how it works so if you ever need more information feel free to check out that link it will give you tons of detail on their whole process of figuring out how the criteria is determined and whether or not you are eligible to participate so the Classifications classifications were put in place to try to make the sport fair so this allows different competitions to be played against people in certain classifications because if they didn't have this pretty much almost every time the person that is the least disabled or the most able-bodied person would win so this allows people to have a more severe disability to have a chance at winning an olympic medal so the unique thing about the impairments is that each sport has a different set of impairments there is a set of ten impairments that go throughout the paralympic games but not each sport classifies each one as an impairment for their sport and some sports take all the different impairments in some sports you only have to have certain impairments to be able to participate so there's a lot to go that goes into whether or not you are able to participate in the paralympic games there are three major steps to determining your classification the first one being do you have an eligible Three Major Steps impairment and do you have an eligible impairment for the sport you're participating in the second one is does your impairment meet the minimum impairment criteria and then finally which sports class should you be in so how does your impairment affect the sport does it affect it a lot does it only affect it a little bit how severe is your impairment specifically for the sport you're participating in and which class should you be placed in and one unique thing as we go through this is your impairment might be severe enough that you're in able to participate in say track but you aren't able to participate in basketball depending on what type of impairment you have and how severe it is you may be able to participate in one sport but not another and that's a very important thing to understand there's a lot of tests that go into figuring out what level your impairment is to make sure that all the games are fair so the Step 1 Eligibility first step is what type of impairment do you have and is it an eligible impairment now there are 10 eligible impairments these are impaired muscle power impaired passive range of motion limb deficiencies leg length differences short stature hypertonia ataxia athetosis and then vision impairment and intellectual impairment now each one of these has specific criteria with it on whether or not you're eligible to participate specifically intellectual impairment is something that has to have happened before you were 18 years of age so this is generally something you were born with so with all those different impairments they're generally split up into three different categories there's physical impairments vision impairment and intellectual impairments so the first eight all kind of fit into that physical impairment category and then you have your vision impairment and then your intellectual impairment and depending on the sport you may have the opportunity no matter what your impairment is to participate this is very common in sports like athletics which is track and field or swimming no matter what your impairment is you are able to participate as long as it's severe enough however there are some sports that only allow you to participate with certain impairments like goalball only allows you to participate if you have a vision impairment and then there are some that Sports Specific allow for a few different types of impairments and commonly this is equestrian as one of the examples so there's some that allow all impairments some that only allow a few and some that only allow one so it does become sports specific a lot of this is i'm going to keep emphasizing that it's sports specific so the international sports federation conducts and tests on you to figure out if you are eligible and have an eligible impairment to be able to participate in your respective sport at the paralympic level so if you have an eligible Minimum Impairment Criteria impairment it's now do you meet the minimum impairment criteria so you have to figure out if you meet the minimum criteria for each one of your impairments so for this each sport has slightly different minimum impairment criteria so you may need it in one sport but not meet it in another so some of these minimum criteria is maximum height for people to be considered short stature or the level of amputation that you may have for some sort of limb deficiency if you meet the minimum impairment criteria then move on to the third level which is determining your sports class so some Sports Classes events like track and fields have lots of different sports classes so that many people can participate and then some sports like powerlifting only have one sports class and the key to sports classes are they are athletes of similar impairment as it affects the sport so you may have people with vision impairments and limb deficiencies in the same race but it depends on how it affects the sport so you may have different impairments all together in a race but they have an equal effect on that sport so they are able to all participate in the same race if it doesn't have an equal effect they will be put into separate classes and compete in different races to make it fair so Physical Tests determining your sports class is done through a bunch of physical tests and to test how you the impairment affects you in that sport you do go through tests with physicians to make sure that you are able to play that sport and that you're able to meet the minimum criteria and everything is done by a classification panel that is trained professionals um both in medicine physicians and then trained professionals in the sports so they know the rules of the sports but they also know the physical aspects of whatever condition you have so it's very important that you go through these tests to get class and many times you will get re-classed especially for some of the impairments as they change over time you may lose more vision over time you can get re-class as it has more effect on how you play the sport so if you guys found this Outro video informative if you have any questions about the paralympic classifications please let me know in the comments down below again i will be linking down below a link to the paralympic website explaining all the details on this if you're looking for more information and more details about each one of the impairments i hope you guys are looking forward to the paralympics coming up in the next few weeks the winter paralympics are happening in beijing this year but i hope you guys enjoyed this video and i will see you guys next wednesday 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