Paralympic Russia was removed from the Games in Rio in full: who is to blame?

As an accredited journalist, I worked at two Paralympics - the London 2012 Summer Paralympics and the Sochi Winter 2014 Paralympics. Both times I observed the incredible way athletes with disabilities and boundless spirit overcame themselves and their illnesses. Russian and American, Ukrainian and British Paralympic athletes - belonging to countries in this case was absolutely conditional. Each of them, going out onto the swimming path or ski slope, deserved not just applause, but real standing ovations.

For me, one of the main professional impressions was the format of interviews with wheelchair athletes, peeped from some Western colleagues. They talked with them, squatting or, in some cases, just sitting on the floor. When I started recording interviews in the same way, after a few minutes my legs got numb, but at such moments I caught myself thinking that I had no right, for example, to stand up and straighten up, because I have people who they overcome pain and are able to endure against any circumstances.

On Sunday, August 7, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) announced the decision to suspend the Russian national team in its entirety from the Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, which is due to begin exactly a month later - on September 7. The head of the organization, Philip Craven, said at a press conference that this decision was made on the basis of a report by an independent commission of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on the promotion of doping at the state level in Russia, including among Paralympic athletes at the Games in Sochi 2 years ago. .

At the same time, as noted earlier, details and any names of representatives of the Russian Paralympic team from the report of the commission led by Richard McLaren have not yet been provided. It was only reported that 35 positive doping tests in Paralympic sports disappeared between 2012 and 2015. However, IPC chief Craven explained that athletes who were preparing for the Rio Games would face collective punishment due to Russia's "corrupt and completely compromised" anti-doping system.

“Of course there are individual athletes who are clean, but until the whole system changes, Russia will not be able to include even those who are clean as participants in IPC competitions,” Craven said in Rio. “The IPC Council has made a unanimous decision: the Russian Paralympic Committee (RPC) is currently unable to ensure full compliance with the anti-doping code, and as a result of this we have decided to suspend the RPC with immediate effect.”

Thus, the office of Craven, having removed the entire Russian team, did not provide opportunities for athletes who had not been caught on doping even once to submit at least individual applications for participation in the Games as independent Paralympians under the IPC flag. Now the Russian sports authorities are preparing a lawsuit in the Court of Sports Arbitration to challenge this decision.

In the meantime, almost two hundred Paralympians, who over the past 4 years have been preparing for their main sporting event, find themselves in limbo. Four years ago in London, Russia was represented by 182 athletes in 12 sports, the majority in athletics and swimming, which brought the team 32 of the 36 gold medals at the 2012 Games and second place in the unofficial medal standings.

Discussions about whether the International Paralympic Committee had the right to make such a tough decision will not subside soon. Many complain that the IPC did something that the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which previously did not remove Russian athletes from the Olympics in Rio, kicked off 5 August. The IOC, led by Thomas Bach, gave Russians the opportunity to apply to international federations for their sports, which should then be approved by a special IOC commission of three specialists.

It turns out that athletes with disabilities were limited in their sports rights, which is hardly fair at least to them. Can the state’s fault for creating a vicious system as a whole, which has yet to be proved, be considered a convincing reason for removing the entire national team as a whole? If yes, then this is a precedent. Therefore, a lot in this matter will depend on the decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sport of Lausanne, which during the Olympics considers all claims submitted in an expedited manner directly to Rio.

“If they accuse the Russian Paralympic Committee of something, let them formulate the accusations clearly and specifically. They are expelled not for general accusations that we are part of the system, but for the fact that so-and-so is to blame for this,” said the President of the Russian Paralympic Committee Vladimir Lukin, who, notably, served as commissioner for 10 years human rights in the Russian Federation.

The Paralympic Games, the purpose of which was initially the treatment and rehabilitation of disabled people, have been held right after the Olympics at the same sports facilities since 1988. Thanks to this, over the past three decades, competitions have acquired a full-fledged sporting character, and winning the medal at the Paralympics is no less valued than Olympic success.

In all sports included in the Paralympic Games program, there is a division into different categories, depending on certain disabilities that the participating athletes have.

For example, in swimming there are a total of 14 categories: from 1st to 10th - for physical problems (cerebral palsy, amputees and birth defects), from 11th to 13th - for visual impairment (including complete blindness) and the 14th - with mental illness.

Paralympic swimmers can start in any of three ways - standing on a platform, sitting on a platform or directly from the water. When blind and visually impaired athletes compete, there are special people at the end of the pool who hold a special pole so that the swimmer touches it to make a turn or finish.

And in athletics there are more than twenty categories: 11-13 - for athletes with visual impairments, 20 - with mental illness, 31-38 - with cerebral palsy, 41-46 - for amputees, T51-56 and F51-58 - for wheelchair users

At the same time, it should be noted that in some disciplines athletes can compete with various violations, but for one reason or another fall into one Paralympic category.

The Paralympic Summer Games in Rio, 15-e in a row in the history of the Paralympic movement, will be held from 7 to 18 September.

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