Impact of the 2018 World Para Swimming classification revision on the race results in international Paralympic swimming events

Abstract

Paralympic swimmers compete in classes, according to their swimming functional abilities. The classification protocol of physical and technical tests carried out to assign a class has undergone multiple revisions over time, the latest one in 2018. As a consequence, most of the athletes with physical impairment were required to attend an evaluation session to have their class re-assigned. We monitored the impact of this latest revision on the race results in two international Paralympic swimming events which took place prior to and just after the implementation of the classification revisions. Despite no dramatic changes being observed in the overall class performances and in the within-class performance variability, the race times of athletes that had their class changed were significantly more in trend with the mean times of the new classes than with those of the former classes. However, considering class increments/decrements separately, this was the case only for class increments. Further investigations could clarify this result and possibly provide indications for further improvements in the classification system.