Paralympics ends ban on athletes with intellectual disabilities
November 21st, 2009From the BBC, [UK] Telegraph, [UK] Times:
Athletes with intellectual disabilities will be permitted to participate in the London 2012 Paralympic Games, following a vote by the International Paralympic Committee.
They had been banned since the year 2000, when journalist Carlos Ribagorda infiltrated Spain’s gold medal winning basketball team and learned that only two members of the victorious 12-man squad had intellectual disabilities. Ribagorda exposed poor methods for evaluating athletes, and reported that some of Spain’s players were engineers and university graduates.
IPC president Sir Philip Craven hailed Saturday’s decision as “the outcome of a unique and excellent cooperation between sports governance and the scientific community.”
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