Para Athletics

Para-athletics is the sport of athletics practiced by people with a disability as a parasport. The athletics events within the parasport are mostly the same as those available to able-bodied people, with two major exceptions in wheelchair racing and the club throw, which are specific to the division. Certain able-bodied events are rarely contested as para-athletic events outside deaf sport; pole vault, triple jump, hammer (of which the club throw is sometimes considered the para-athletic equivalent) and the three hurdling events. The sport is known by various names, including disability athletics, disabled track and field and Paralympic athletics. Top-level competitors may be called elite athletes with disability.

Governance

Competitors are typically organised into three broad categories: deaf sports, athletes with a physical disability, and athletes with an intellectual disability. Deaf athletes typically compete among themselves at events such as the Deaflympics, or in able-bodied events (such as British hammer thrower Charlotte Payne) while athletes with physical and intellectual disabilities are usually assessed and given a para-athletics classification, which groups together athletes with similar ability levels. These classifications are governed by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and comprise a single letter and a number: T for Track or F for Field, then a number defining the level of ability. In competition, events may take place between athletes of identical class if numbers are sufficient, otherwise a range of similar classes may compete in the same event. The Raza point score system can be used in field events to allow athletes of different abilities to directly compete.

International governance operates outside of the sport's able-bodied governing body World Athletics (until 2019: ''IAAF'') and instead is divided among those categories, with deaf athletics overseen by the International Committee of Sports for the Deaf (CISS), para-athletics for the physical disabled principally governed by the World Para Athletics subcommittee of the IPC, and para-athletics for the intellectually disabled through the International Sports Federation for Persons with Intellectual Disability (INAS). There are also condition-specific organisations, such as the International Dwarf Sports Federation and International Athletics Association for Persons with Down Syndrome. Rules for the sport are adapted from those set forth by the World Athletics, with the majority of rules for para-athletics being the same as those for able-bodied competitions, with exceptions that account for competitors' abilities, such as a visual signal instead of a starting pistol in races for the deaf.

Para-athletics has been one of the sports at the Paralympic Games since 1960, though deaf athletes and most athletes with an intellectual disability compete separately at the Deaflympics and Special Olympics World Games, respectively. The three major sport-specific world championships for para-athletics are the World Para Athletics Championships, the World Deaf Athletics Championships and the INAS World Athletics Championships. Other major para-athletics competitions are hosted within the IWAS World Games and the INAS Global Games.

Nomenclature

The name of the sport is ultimately derived from the Paralympic movement, the Paralympic Games and the name of the international Paralympic Committee. 'Paralympic' was originally a portmanteau of Olympic and paraplegic, reflecting the roots of the movement among spinal injury patients at Stoke Mandeville Hospital under Sir Ludwig Guttmann, but as the Paralympic Games gained popularity and prestige, and importantly, expanded to other non-spinal classes such as cerebral palsy, vision impairment and running with prosthetics, the reasoning behind the ''para'' part of the name was changed to emphasise that the Games and the Movement were ''parallel'' (and thus equal) to the Olympics.

As a result '''para- came to be recognised as a standard prefix to denote all disability sports, and as organisations were formed by the International Paralympic Committee to organise and regulate the different disability sports, a practice emerged, particularly in sports with multiple disability classifications, of describing the sports with the prefix ''para-'', including in the names of the organisations formed by the IPC to run them e.g. World Para-Swimming, or the UCI-recognised discipline of para-cycling. The IPC Athletics Committee thus changed its name to World Para-Athletics, with Para-athletics itself a portmanteau of ''para'' and athletics. The main stand-alone championships of the sport are now referred to as the World Para-Athletics Championships - itself mirroring the change in the able-bodied events when the IAAF change its branding to World Athletics.

Classification

Competitors at elite level competitions are classified by disability, to arrange athletes with a similar disability in the same event. A classified T12 athlete for example, is a track athlete with a visual impairment.

*F = Field athletes
*T = Track athletes
*11–13 = Visual impairment. 11 and 12 compete with a sighted guide