Making a splash

Tiago Villanueva and Anne Green look in detail at paralympic swimming

When Leila Marques, a final year medical student at the University of Lisbon, had her forearm amputated because of a congenital abnormality when she was three years old she began to swim. Initially, it was part of her rehabilitation process, but it later took on a new level.

Having won many international swimming competitions over the past few years, Leila is a world class athlete. This summer she will be one of 4000 athletes from 130 countries heading to Greece between 17 and 28 September to participate in the Paralympic Games.

In the beginning

The Paralympic movement began in 1948, when Ludwig Guttmann, a neurologist working in Stoke Mandeville Hospital in the United Kingdom, realised the potential of sport in the rehabilitation process of veterans of the second world war with injuries of the spinal cord. He introduced the Stoke Mandeville Games for war veterans and made his competition coincide with the Olympic Games held that year in London.

Competitors from other countries with different disabilities were later invited to participate and the Paralympic games took on its Olympic-style format. Except for in 1984, the games have been held in the same year as the Olympics and since the Seoul Summer Games (1988) and the Albertville Winter Games (2001), in the same venue. All the athletes now live in the same village and use the same facilities, catering services, and medical services. But it was not until the Sydney 2000 Olympics, that the organising committee was responsible for both events.

Few Paralympic athletes are able to commit full time to sport. State financial support that they get is much less than Olympic athletes and depends on the country. This means athletes have to support themselves by other means.

Leila, like most athletes, combines her sport with work. As a final year medical student in Portugal, Leila has already completed her undergraduate exams and works full time in hospital as part of her pregraduation internship. During the Paralympics Leila will have to take three weeks off from work: "I will have to make up my for absence in some way... sometimes I think that I would like to postpone my graduation for a while, but then I think that the outlook for 2004 is simply fantastic, to be able to finish two things at the same time, the Paralympic cycle and medical school." Leila has been to Atlanta, Sydney, and is already dreaming of Beijing in 2008. Her best year to date was 2002: she won third place in the 100 metres breaststroke competition at the world championships in Argentina and reached the same position in the overall world rankings for that event.

Organisers of the Paralympics recognise six disability groups--amputee or dysmelia, cerebral palsy, intellectual disability, spinal cord injury, visual impairment, and "les autres" ("the others") (box). This last group includes all those that cannot be included in the others.

Classification

Athletes have to be grouped in their sport and in their events to make sure that competition between athletes with the same degree of disability is fair. For example, it would not be fair to make a swimmer with slight coordination problems compete in the same event as a swimmer with severe coordination problems. Classification is merely a structure for competition.

Each sport defines its classes, and these form part of the sport rules. The classification system is functional, so it is functional ability that matters and not individual disability. This means that an athlete who uses a wheelchair for mobility purposes may compete not only with other athletes in a wheelchair, but against athletes with an amputation and athletes with cerebral palsy.

Leila is classified as S9 SB8 SM9. What does this mean? In swimming, for example, a prefix S denotes the class for freestyle, backstroke, and butterfly; class SB is for breaststroke; and SM is the class for individual medley. The numbers after the letters range between 1 and 14. The numbers 1 to 10 pertain to the classes allocated to swimmers with physical disabilities, 11 to 13 to swimmers with a visual disability (S11 is a swimmer with no sight and an S13 one with sight restrictions) and 14 is a class allocated to swimmers with an intellectual disability. For physical disabilities, there is a range; the swimmers with severe disability (S1, SB1, SM1) to those with the minimal disability (S10, SB9, SM10).

Leila competes solely with athletes of class 9 freestyle, backstroke, and butterfly (S9), and individual medley (SM9), and class 8 in breaststroke (S8). These were considered to have the same functional ability as she does.

However, classification is not static, it is an ongoing process. A class is allocated to an athlete in the beginning of the career may be reviewed sometime throughout it.

Leila Marques (above) and in action (below)

International classifiers

But who is responsible for allocating athletes into their appropriate class? A classification team of two people decide the swimmers' class. There is one medical person--doctor or physiotherapist--and a technical person who has swimming expertise. The classifiers have been required to attend classification courses that consist of theory and technical information. For a classifier to be authorised at least three authorised classifiers evaluate the trainee classifiers and are required to report the results of the evaluation to the full classification panel, which comprises at least 10 authorised classifiers.

Classification comprises first a medical bench test adapted to be swimming specific, done by medical people. Points are given for each test. There is a classification manual with the disability profile, practical profile, and the points required when the swimmer is allocated a class. The total number points then determine the approximate classes for the swimmers. They then do a water test and watch the swimmer to confirm that the bench test information corresponds with the water test. A swimmer's classification is not determined until the swimmer competes.

Leila hopes to remain connected to swimming when her time as an athlete draws to a close and she wants to become an international classifier or the doctor of the national swimming team.

Rules in competitions

Just as there is a disability classification system, the rules of Paralympic swimming competitions are adapted to take the disabilities of the athletes into account. For example, the swimmer may do the forward start (diving) from the platform, next to the platform, or may start in the water. This applies to all events, except backstroke and medley relay races, where the swimmers start in the water facing the end of the pool.

In the lower classes, coaches are allowed to help at the start, by helping to maintain standing balance or holding the swimmer's wrist or ankle, but under no circumstances can they give an extra push to the swimmer. Swimmers with visual disability are allowed to have tappers. These are people who use tapping devices (a stick with a soft object--for example, a tennis ball--attached to the end) to tap the swimmer before he or she reaches the end of the pool, either at a turn or the finish of a race.

Setting an example to others

Paralympic athletes are increasingly starting to stand on equal grounds with regular athletes, sharing a similar high profile lifestyle provided by intense media exposure. Leila now belongs to Team Visa (Visa is her new sponsor), a project comprising about 50 athletes, both Olympic and Paralympic, from 20 European countries aiming at sponsoring and supporting Olympic and Paralympic sports. She often has to attend functions and other events. "The other day I had to miss work for a couple of days to shoot a commercial for television. I think that it is really important for handicapped people to realise that they will not achieve anything if they lock themselves at home. I have the chance to inspire people if they realise they are looking at someone who is at first glance less likely than others to become a high achiever, but who still becomes successful."

She looks at swimming with the same attitude as medicine: "Whether in sports or in medicine, you have to ask a lot of yourself and be methodical to reach your goals. It takes a lot of personal investment to be one of the best."