A “mind-blowing” number of Paralympians are faking the severity of their disabilities to take advantage of the system and win medals, a new investigation revealed.
The former head of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has called for a sweeping reform to save the integrity of the Games after many Paralympians have come forward with stories of exploiting the rules, according to a report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Xavier Gonzalez, who led the IPC from 2004 to 2019, said athletes would play up their disabilities to compete in events that they may not actually be qualified to be in.
The IPC is in charge of enforcing the rules of classification, but Gonzalez has for the formation of a new body that would be more effective at removing possible cheaters.
“Trying to do things with classification to win an advantage is not a thing that the Paralympic movement can tolerate,” he said.
Gonzalez is not alone in his criticism of the current IPC, with many officials questioning the agency’s ability to crack down on misrepresentation.
One official ultimately concluded that “the system does not work,” while another noted that there were “no repercussions for those who cheat,” according to an IPC document acquired by Four Corners.
Among the athletes accused of misrepresentation was Stuart Jones, a member of Australia’s 2021 cycling team in the trike class.
Jones suffered a severe spinal cord injury in a 2014 crash, but despite being told that he may never walk again, the cyclist found a calling in the para-cycling three-wheeled trike division.
The trike division is specifically for athletes who can’t ride a two-wheeled bike because of their disabilities.
However, Jones could still ride on a regular bicycle and competed interchangeably between two-wheeled and three-wheeled races for years after his accident.
His former partner, Sandy Kryzius, told Four Corners that Jones would also limp when he didn’t need to because he “needed to look disabled,” and that it needed to be kept a secret that he could still ride a two-wheeled bike.
“It definitely had to be a secret within the para-cycling community,” she said.
AusCycling, Australia’s cycling body, denied that it was ever aware of Jones’ competing in two-wheeled races after his accident. Jones did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Fellow Australian Paralympian Maddison Elliott noted that it was not uncommon for athletes to appear more impaired than they actually are to compete in different categories.
“There are people who are just doing it because they’re not winning in their classification, they want to compete in a classification that they can win in,” Elliott, a four-time gold medallist, told Four Corners.
Legendary US Paralympic swimmer Jessica Long raised this very issue before the 2021 Tokyo Games, with the 12-time gold medalist warning of a cheating epidemic.
Long, who had her legs amputated just below her knees when she was 18 months old, found that throughout her paralympic career, her opponents continued to appear more and more able-bodied.
During the 2016 Rio Games, Long saw herself lose race after race, and her records shattered by athletes she said shouldn’t have been in the same category.
“I don’t want to seem like a poor sport, but I can’t watch this sport that I love continue to get destroyed like this,” she told Sports Illustrator in 2020. “All of this is happening on a world stage, and no one in charge is doing anything about it.”
Long’s criticism coincided with that of Jane Buckley, the former IPC and medical director for the Australian Paralympic team, who told Four Corners: “The level of misrepresentation that started to take place after 2009 was quite mind-blowing in some sports and particularly… swimming.”
And sometimes the athlete may not even be cheating on purpose, as was the case with the UK’s Rebecca Chin, a Paralympian who was wrongly told she had cerebral palsy at the 2008 Beijing games.
Chin had an impairment of hyper-flexible ankles, but officials still put up against athletes with cerebral palsy. Chin ended up winning silver but was later disqualified and stripped of her medal.
“Looking back, it is so frustrating because I know that that is not how you’re supposed to conduct yourself,” Chin told Four Corners. “All I knew was what I was told by people who I was looking up to at the time. People who were in charge.
“I still don’t believe that I cheated. I was badly led.”
Perhaps the most infamous incident at the Paralympics occurred in the 2000 Sydney games, where Spain’s men’s basketball team took home the gold even though none of its athletes were actually disabled.
The story came out after a member of the team, Carlos Ribagorda, came clean later that year, alleging that at least 15 of Spain’s 200 Paralympians had “no type of physical or mental handicap.”
Fernando Martin Vincente, the then head of the Spanish Federation for Mentally Handicapped Sports, was found guilty of fraud in the scandal.
The IPC said that Gonzalez’s call to put a new body in charge of enforcing its rule was unnecessary and that the organization is currently reviewing its classification system.
In 2016, the IPC launched an investigation of more than 80 athletes for intentional misrepresentation but said there was not enough evidence to prove wrongdoing from any athlete.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/03/former-officials-claim-paralympians-faking-disability-severity/
