WE GO AGAIN
KEVIN McCALLUM: Cheats bring shame to the ‘ag-shame’ Olympics version
At the 2004 Paralympics, I asked a South African athlete what had become of his teammate, a swimmer as I recall. She had competed at the 2000 Games in Sydney and was not in the team for Athens. He paused and took a small while: "I think she got fixed." It’s not done to suggest that disabled athletes are broken in the first place, but Paralympians have a black humour, one that takes a little getting used to. The swimmer had, perhaps, had a procedure that corrected what had qualified her to be a Paralympian. A quick guide to the Paralympic categories: athletes are classified according to the severity of their disability, the number of limbs amputated, the level of cerebral palsy, the depth of their eyesight. It took me a while to get used to the seemingly endless abbreviations, and when I did I realised how daft it was for me to repeat them for readers. So I would describe the physical obstacle the athlete had. It made more sense. The proper way to find this out was to ask the athlete...
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