BUDAPEST, August 29, 2024 - Below is an interview which Hungarian National Sports Daily (Nemzeti Sport) had with the President of the Hungrian Paralympic Committee, László Szabó on issues surrounding the classification system in para sport.

Nemzeti Sport:  With the growing international and domestic attention around the Paralympics, is there also a business interest in the movement and could this worsen the fairness of the competition conditions for athletes with genuine disabilities?

László Szabó: Of course it is tangible. 168 countries will compete, never before have so many athletes from so many countries competed in the Paralympics. Almost every country in the world has bought the broadcasting rights. The Olympics and Paralympics have countless global sponsors in common. In many countries around the world, there is a substantial cash prize for a Paralympic medal. With these come the 'burdens' of doping, illegal performance enhancement, circumvention of the rules and, in the case of disabled athletes, the special case of 'pretending' to be more disabled than they are.

Nemzeti Sport: One of the founding principles of the Paralympic movement is that sport truly belongs to everyone. Therefore, depending on their level of disability, all people who want to show their talent in a sport must compete against opponents with a similar level of disability. Was classification basically a good way to do this?

László Szabó: Yes, the idea is right, but it is like the Cold War: more serious weapons are followed by more serious counter-measures, then more serious weapons are developed, and so on. Medical, physiotherapeutic methods are developed to make the disability appear greater than it really is, and let us be honest, corruption is there. Classification, the categorisation of impairments, needs to be constantly refined, clarified and cracked down on those who circumvent it.

Nemzeti Sport:  What is going on behind the scenes, as Eduard Novak has pointed out, which is leading to more and more seemingly intact competitors in his sport, cycling, for example? How sport-specific is this phenomenon?

László Szabó: There are examples of this in many sports. At the Paris Paralympics, a German kayaker who had won a quota was not allowed to go because it turned out that he could get out of his wheelchair and walk on his own two feet. And he tried to hide it. Athletes are watching each other, using social media to see, for example, who is posting what, and whether they are posting a picture that shows that they "can do" something that they "shouldn't" be doing in that injury category. Of course, it is difficult to determine the degree of injury "at a glance", but I have seen some oddities on the Paralympic podium. I am afraid that the number of frauds will increase, we have to be vigilant.

Nemzeti Sport: Is there a risk that truly disabled athletes will be excluded from their categories?

László Szabó: Obviously not in large numbers. But it is indeed possible that some able-bodied athletes with a lower level of ability might try to 'fit in' among the para-athletes. I'm not afraid that this could be a general phenomenon, but even one case could have terrible effects from a prestige point of view.

Nemzeti Sport: What might be a longer-term solution to ensure that classification serves a real purpose? To what extent can this activity be made transparent?

László Szabó: We need more classifiers, from more countries, not a closed circle of classifiers who might even play together. We, Hungarians, should also work on this, we have excellent classifiers like Dr. Zoltán Bejek or Anita László, but we need more. We are waiting for those who are interested, and we are looking for them. It's a nice challenge, you can build a serious international career with it and even earn money. The number of disability categories needs to be expanded, especially where there are only two or three categories: rowing and wheelchair tennis, for example, suffer greatly from this, and we Hungarians are constantly doing badly, and this is clearly the reason why our excellent rower Zsolt Pető and our great tennis player Attila Farkas did not qualify for Paris.

Nemzeti Sport: What do you expect from the Hungarian team at the Paralympics in Paris?

László Szabó: 39 competitors in 68 events. We expect 68 gold medals. We want to win every competition.