The 2018 Asian Para Games Committee (INAPGOC) will carry out the classification of athletes for four days from Tuesday (02/10) until Friday (05/10). The purpose of classification itself is to determine class equality.
Christopher, INAPGOC Classification Director told Liputan6.com to clarify that the process is not meant to underestimate or disparage the ability of athletes, but the classification process should be done to generate data of athletes.
“The classification process will be carried out to create a fair game, so that they can compete fairly, based on their groupings”, Christopher stated about the importance of having fair play in sport.
The classification stage will put athletes into groups. According to Christopher, there are 886 athletes out of 3.883 athletes in total who will be in this process.
“There will be many groupings. For instance, in athletics, there are the quadriplegic, visually impaired, and intellectual disability. For quadriplegic itself, there are those whose arms or legs were amputated, be it caused by pure loss of abdominal or other expiratory muscles, there are many different causes of it,” he explained.
“The final result will reveal how they play and compete. Their performances will not be assessed when they are inactive only, but when they actively play as well. The classifiers will ask them to run to assess their levels.”
However, Christopher added, the classification process that will be held from Tuesday (02/10) until Friday (05/10) is intended for those who haven’t certified before. “We will only classify those athletes who haven’t obtained any certificates before.”
In the same occasion, Christopher also admitted that the biggest challenge still remains in holding classification process, namely the availability of classifiers in Indonesia.
“Indonesia does not have any classifiers. Thus, I contacted each federation in a year’s time to provide international-level classifiers.”
“Now there are only 91 classifiers in total, where only 52% of them come from Asia,” he added.