Irish footballer expelled in disability row

Published on Friday 12 September 2008 00:07

THE Ireland team have called into question the integrity of the classification process for Paralympians with cerebral palsy after one of their athletes was expelled from the Beijing Games for being insufficiently disabled.

Derek Malone, an athletics bronze medallist at the 2004 Paralympics, was ruled ineligible after officials said he did not "demonstrate enough impairment of function in football" in Ireland's first match in the seven-a-side football in Beijing.

The 28-year-old said he was "bitterly disappointed" and the victim of his own success in training so hard to manage the symptoms of his condition, an impairment which results in altered neuromuscular function.

"Cerebral palsy has shown to be a very trainable condition, but if you stop training for any length of time, the symptoms will return. There's no cure for cerebral palsy," an emotional Malone told a news conference yesterday. "I find it ridiculous. High-performance sport is about pushing the limits. How can you have a system that penalises athletes for working hard at their skills? I refuse to let a flawed process cast aspersions on the integrity of the achievements I have made."

All athletes competing in the seven-a-side football, a sport contested only by athletes with cerebral palsy at the Games, are assessed and classified by officials according to the extent of their impairment. Those, like Malone, who have the least disability must have "an obvious impairment that has impact on the sport of football".

Ukraine, Brazil and the Netherlands joined the Irish in expressing their concerns about the process, which they said was "not open and transparent" and suffered from "unequal application to different nations".

"It appears to be the case that if he had not pursued his athletic endeavour with such zeal for a significant time period leading to these Games, he is more likely to have been classified eligible," said Liam Harbison, secretary general of the Paralympic Council of Ireland. "That is at odds with the very ethos of high-performance sport...we feel he has become a victim of a flawed rule book."

Alan Dickson, the president of the governing Cerebral Palsy International Sports and Recreation Association (CPISRA), said he would meet concerned delegations to discuss the matter further.

"We have had a recognised classification system in place for some time," he said. "As the sport moves on, you have to be prepared to move that on too ... clearly people are training more and that may have an effect on their functional ability."

Malone said he had trained for four years for Beijing, sacrificing his social life and engineering career to fulfil his Paralympic dream.