In the Paralympic Games, judo is practised by people with visual impairments. Part of judo is the struggle to gain a grip on each other. In order to make judo accessible for people with visual impairments, the judokas start in contact with one another. For a long time, it was thought that the level of vision a competitor had didn’t matter, and partially sighted and fully blind athletes therefore competed against each other. However, research by movement scientist David Mann and colleague Kai Krabben, who completed his PhD on this topic, revealed that this was unfair.
David Mann trained as an optometrist before transitioning to sports science. He’s an Associate Professor in the department of Human Movement Sciences at VU Amsterdam. He also serves as director of one of the research and development centres of the International Paralympic Committee, where he focuses on the classification of athletes with visual impairments.
Fair competition
“These centres were set up to improve the fairness of the competition,” explains Mann. “We look at who currently qualifies to participate, and then determine which class they should be placed in.” Mann examined the previous judo system, finding that fully blind participants were disadvantaged when competing against partially sighted participants.
Mann looked at the statistics, which showed that fully blind athletes had much lower win rates against partially sighted athletes. He explains: “We also experimented with completely removing sight from partially sighted judokas. Their performance deteriorated as a result.”
Changing the classification rules was a long process, involving close collaboration with the International Blind Sports Federation. The current rules came into effect after the last Paralympic Games in Tokyo in 2021. Paris will therefore be the first to host the Paralympic Games under the new rules. “National federations decide which athletes receive funding. Fully blind athletes were disadvantaged due to their lower chances of winning. Now that there’s a new classification system, there’s more incentive to fund fully blind judokas. This system creates fairer competition and has led to a threefold increase in the number of fully blind participants,” says Mann.
The new classification rules have negative outcomes for other athletes. Mann explains: “Our research showed that previous participants with less severe visual impairments can no longer compete. They have no real disadvantage in this sport and can compete against athletes without visual impairments.”
Different rules
When examining classification systems, the bar can be raised or lowered depending on the sport and the disability. Mann explains: “In shooting and skiing, for example, the level of impairment to qualify has been lowered because it turned out to be more difficult for people with impairments to practise the sport than previously thought.” In the past, the level of impairment was the same for every sport. “But it makes sense to have different rules for different sports,” Mann says. “If you’re missing a hand, for example, it has more impact on a swimmer than on a marathon runner.”
New classes cannot simply be added to paralympic sports, Mann explains. “There are a fixed number of medals to be awarded at the Paralympic Games; so if a new class is added, a medal opportunity has to be removed elsewhere.’ In judo, this was resolved by including fewer weight classes.
Mann’s work is not done now that the rules have changed. “After these Games, we hope to show that the competition has become fairer. We look at the athletes’ performances, and the relationship between visual impairment and their performance. Hopefully, we will now see that the best athletes win in their class, and that we’re getting closer to a fairer system for everyone.”