The history of the Paralympic Games, which at the moment are a significant global event, is rooted in rehabilitation.
The first official Paralympic Games took place in Rome in 1960. back to 1948when neurologist Ludwig Guttmann organized the Stoke Mandeville Games in England for World War II veterans with spinal cord injuries. He believed that sport could play a crucial role in rehabilitation and push the boundaries of human performance in a way that other approaches couldn’t.
Today's Paralympic Games proceed this legacy, with technology playing a central role in these achievements.
Technology has enabled athletes with disabilities to achieve incredible heights, but it surely has also brought with it latest challenges, particularly by way of ensuring fairness and equal opportunities in competition.
From easy to difficult
At that point, Paralympic technology was very rudimentary in comparison with today's standards. Athletes competed in regular wheelchairs and used easy harnesses for support.
As the Paralympics became more popular, competitive success became increasingly invaluable, so athletes used special technologies to achieve a competitive advantage.
Running blades, for instance, are carbon fiber prosthetics designed to mimic natural leg movement while improving speed and jumping power. These blades have revolutionized the game of running, allowing athletes with lower limb amputations to compete at speeds comparable to, and sometimes faster than, able-bodied athletes.
South African sprinter and convicted murderer Oscar Pistorius was the primary double amputee with running prostheses to compete as a part of the boys's 4×400 relay on the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
A changing conversation
However, by the tip of the 2010s, the discussion about assistive technology utilized by athletes shifted from celebrating integration to a debate about unfair benefits.
In 2019, Blake Leeper, a double amputee sprinter, applied to World Athletics to compete against able-bodied athletes on the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The International Association of Athletics Federations received an independent scientific opinion that Leeper's prosthetics gave him a competitive advantage and rejected the applying.
Mike Byrnes/EPA
Leeper challenged this decision before the Court of Arbitration for Sport. the court ruled against him.
Leeper, who’s African-American, appealed the choice on the grounds that the scientific recommendations for World Athletics were based on racially biased science. But the court rejected his appealIt ruled that the evidence was fair and unbiased.
As technology continues to advance, blades may soon seem modest in comparison with what the longer term holds.
A notable example of that is neuroprosthetics, that are devices that interact with the human nervous system to compensate for the lack of muscle strength and endurance attributable to neurological impairments akin to spinal cord injuries.
The devices may be attached externally or surgically implanted and might improve functions akin to seat stability and rowing machine performance.
It shouldn’t be difficult to assume that some athletes use these devices to achieve a big – although perhaps undetectable – advantage over their competitors.
The International Paralympic Committee has a Sports Equipment DirectiveOne of the principles is that sporting performance ought to be determined primarily by human performance and the influence of technology and equipment ought to be secondary.
However, to keep up this principle, enforceable rules are needed. As technology advances, this becomes increasingly difficult – similar to on the Olympic Games.
Creating a level playing field
Technology may play a vital role within the classification of athletes.
Each of the 22 Paralympic sports uses a classification system to make sure fair and meaningful competition. Each athlete is classed in accordance with the sort and severity of their impairment.
However, classification shouldn’t be without challenges.
Despite significant advances in research, the most effective and most reliable methods available still depend on expert opinion. And even when classifiers follow strict guidelines, they have to consider an incredibly wide selection of test results.
Many classification tests also require athletes to exert full effort. This leaves open the chance that an athlete searching for to achieve an unfair competitive advantage may intentionally perform poorly on these tests so as to exaggerate the severity of their impairment. They could then be placed in a category with athletes with more severe impairments.
To meet these challenges, we’re Part of a research team which is currently developing a classification system based on artificial intelligence.
We will use computer vision of para-athletes performing a wide range of movements over time to coach the system and develop an app. The app will allow athletes world wide to film themselves performing sport-related tasks, submit the video, and receive accurate, objective sport instruction.
This will make classifications more trustworthy and improve access for athletes in rural and distant areas or developing countries.
However, the range of para-athletes is big and it’s going to not be easy to recruit and film a representative sample of high-level para-athletes. The system also cannot completely protect against athletes who deliberately underperform. However, it’s capable of detect fluctuations in performance that occur over time and would otherwise be undetectable to the human eye.
This increases confidence within the accuracy of the athlete's classification.
Once the system is developed, its success may even rely upon whether it gains the trust of your complete Paralympic community.
The use of technology to achieve an unfair advantage is as old as sport itself. But technology can be precisely the tool we want to make use of to make sure fairness and create a level playing field.
