DISABILITY SPORT AT AN ELITE LEVEL: ADAPTIVE ROWING

BY MIKE CHISHOLM, MCSP A BRIEF HISTORY

Since 1960, the Paralympic Games have provided a sporting forum for elite athletes with a disability to compete at the highest level. Beijing in 2008 saw the introduction of adaptive rowing as the Games’ newest sport. The International Rowing Federation (FISA) is the sole

world governing body for rowing, and the sport is practiced by athletes in 24 countries. Adaptive rowing is rowing or sculling (rowing requires the use of one oar per rower, sculling involves the use of two per rower) for rowers with a disability. Adaptive implies that the equipment is “adapted” to the user to practice the sport, rather than the sport being “adapted” to the user. FISA’s objective for adaptive rowing is “to provide the opportunity for athletes with a disability, both men and women, to compete at FISA events and Paralympic Games”. FISA first introduced adaptive rowing at World Championship level at its 2002 World Rowing Championships in Seville, Spain, when 38 athletes competed in the single sculls and the coxed four. The sport continued to develop with four boat classes at the 2003 World Rowing Championships in Milan, Italy. In the 2007 event, 152 athletes entered from 23 nations. It was at this competition that Great Britain successfully qualified all four boats for the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing. FISA has established classification criteria that define the minimum disability of an athlete permitted to compete. Classification places athletes in groupings with other athletes of similar levels of functional ability to provide competition that is as fair as possible. Adaptive rowing is open to male and female rowers, and is currently divided into four boat classes which are part of the World Championships programme and where athletes compete alongside their able bodied counterparts.

NEW SPORT, NEW PARADIGMS - THE EMERGENCE OF A PHILOSOPHY Consider these questions n With under a thousand days to go to the start of the 2012 Paralympics on the 29th August, what are the chances of

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the GB team repeating or bettering its performance in Beijing in 2008? n Is the care of our Paralympic athletes less important, demanding or fulfilling than that of their Olympic contemporaries and is theirs a “Cinderella service”? The dictionary describes a “Cinderella service” as “a person or thing that has been ignored or treated as less, subordinate to other people or things”. In 2007, I attended a high performance sport seminar

where Mark Woods, holder of 12 Paralympic medals over 5 Games, was asked whether he felt that because his medals were won at a Paralympic event, their value was inherently less than those won at an equivalent Olympic event. The questioner was driving at whether Mark thought there was prejudice towards those competing in or those supporting athletes at Paralympic level. Mark said he didn’t feel this was the case because he had been classified into a category that meant he was competing with individuals of very similar ability, in addition he felt he had trained as hard as his Olympic contemporaries to achieve his success. I am not about to try and answer some of the more philosophical issues surrounding the validity of the Parallel Olympic games, that is for you, the reader, as an individual to draw your own conclusions about. What I will show you is what it looks like to support athletes competing at this level. In 2008 the sport of adaptive rowing made its first appearance at the Paralympic Games. By the end of that

BOX 1: BOAT CLASSES IN ADAPTIVE ROWING

LTAMix4+ (legs, trunk and arms mixed coxed four) Sliding seat, mixed gender boat

TAMix2x (trunk and arms mixed double scull) Fixed seat, mixed gender boat

ASW1x (women’s single, arms and shoulders) Fixed seat, women only

ASM1x (men’s single, arms and shoulders) Fixed seat, men only

Since 2006 all boat classes race over 1000 metres (previously 2000 metres) sportEX medicine 2010;44(Apr):24-27