UNBALANCING ACTS. ATLANTA AFTERMATH:

By: BRIAN SCOBIE. IBSA Technical Officer.

 In addition to the celebration of the Extraordinary General Assembly of the IPC, which produced a series of resolutions that satisfied hardly anyone in the end, the Atlanta Summer Paralympic Games also provided the setting for a series of sport-specific meetings that have a bearing on the way the different sports will develop their activities over the next four years. These meetings were the SPORTS ASSEMBLIES for the summer sports, and included the elections for the IPC Sports Assembly Executive Committees (the SAEC'S). IBSA was, of course, most interested in these discussions and elections, since the sports themselves enjoy, within the IPC structures, a degree - though certainly not a very large degree! - of autonomy and also since, in theory, it is the SAEC'S who determine the competition programme, the classification structures and the competition rules that will be applied in subsequent Paralympic Games and in any other IPC championships held during this four-year period that will take us to the year 2000.

The IPC bylaws that govern the conduct of the Sports Assemblies and the SAEC'S are drafted in such general terms that they allow for variations between the organizations of each sport and can easily cause confusion. The status of the International Federations that represent the interests of the different disability groups, such as IBSA, varies widely from one Sports Assembly to another.

AFFRONTS TO IBSA

In ATHLETICS, IBSA and the other Federations (the IOSD'S) are each guaranteed one representative on the Athletics SAEC, and elections are only held for the posts of Chairman, Vice-Chairman, Secretary, Treasurer and Athletes' Representative, with the other places being filled by representatives of the IOSD'S. In Atlanta, IBSA's one elected member on this SAEC was opposed and defeated in the subsequent vote. The representatives of IBSA, therefore, have no say on the Athletics SAEC and the Blind athletes can only express their opinions and preferences through their National Paralympic Committee. It may not be so surprising to find that four of the five elected posts are occupied by candidates affiliated to wheelchair associations.

With regard to the SWIMMING Sports Assembly, IBSA's candidate was likewise defeated in the vote for the posts of Member-at-Large. There is no guaranteed representation for any of the IOSD'S on the Swimming SAEC, although one blind swimmer did manage to get elected to this Committee. The Federations have one single vote in the elections, whilst the national members of the Assembly have three votes each. In fact, the Swimming SAEC is the most determined to refuse any specific allocation to the disability groups. It has three competition groupings - Functional (i.e. locomotor), Blind and INAS-FMH - and bases its allocation of votes on this basis. It does nothing to ensure that each one of these groups is represented in the composition of the SAEC. Given the minimal access of INAS-FMH to the competition programme to date, the Blind are the ones who really lose out with this system. The blind swimmers make up a considerable proportion of the participants and, nevertheless, can consider themselves lucky to have one single representative on the Executive. Since the Swimming SAEC has declared its interest in altering the classification of Blind swimmers in response to requests from the athletes in the other competition group, the next four years will no doubt prove a definitive test for the principles of consent and respect for the authority of IBSA in Blind Swimming.

SPECIFIC SPORTS

Fortunately, in GOALBALL as well as in JUDO, which are not practiced by other disability groups, and so remain exclusively as IBSA sports within the Paralympic programme, the elections issue did not hold the same significance in the meetings held. The wealth of participating countries in Judo allowed for discussions to be held on a wide number of issues and gave rise to hopes for a broadly-based IBSA Judo committee for the future. The structures for GOALBALL have been in place for many years now and, therefore, we have every reason to expect its success as a sport for the Blind to continue.

In CYCLING, the Assembly elections secured more success for those who have been working within the IBSA TANDEM structures. It had been the intention of our late colleague SERGE QUERARD, Chairman of the IBSA Tandem Subcommittee, to let his name go forward as candidate to chair the Cycling SAEC, but his death early this year deprived us all of that possibility. Nevertheless, the elections led to PETER PAULDIND of the USA being voted Chairman, and the French candidate, JENS SCHRODER, also enjoys the wholehearted support of IBSA. We therefore have every reason to believe that the interests of Tandem Cycling will be well served within the Cycling SAEC.

LAWNBOWLING is a significant sport for the Blind in terms of the number of participants all over the world, and yet it is a sport facing possible exclusion from the Paralympic Games because it allegedly does not meet the new criteria, established in order to verify that it is "widely practiced". Said criteria are not applied to Blind LAWNBOWLING alone, but to Lawnbowling for all disability groups, and require that more than eighteen countries in three continents demonstrate they hold national championships or maintain rankings as evidence that the sport is indeed "widely practiced". The LAWNBOWLING SAEC had two major problems: firstly, compiling the evidence from the countries in time to complete the scrutiny process; secondly, the fact that the participation of the handicapped in Lawnbowling often takes place within able-bodied sport makes some of this activity invisible. The extent of Blind Lawnbowling will hopefully be evident after the IBBA World Championships in NEW ZEALAND in March 1997 but, in the meantime, the situation as far as SYDNEY is concerned looks pretty bleak. As far as the SAEC is concerned, BILL MCNAMARA, Chairman of the IBSA Lawnbowling Subcommittee and current IBBA President, was confirmed as Blind LAWNBOWLING representative.

There can be little doubt that the IPC and its Sports Assemblies are, on the whole, dominated by the "functional classes" or, in other words, by the interests of the locomotor disability groups. They constitute a majority in the nations and are thus dominant in the national representation within the IPC. Since the IPC operates on the basis of a simple majority of the national votes, the General Assembly votes and the elections within the SAEC'S are inevitably carried by the preponderance of the votes from the locomotor disability groups. We should also recall that, to date, IBSA's athletes are only represented in five of the sports included on the Summer Paralympics programme for SYDNEY. In cases where the decisions to be taken affect common ground between the interests of different disability groups, no problems arise. Yet there certainly are cases in which the issues to be decided upon reveal differences of opinion between the disability groups, even within the same country. There is little doubt that in such circumstances, and in the case of elections that are determined by simple majority, the minority interest of IBSA, and of the Blind in general, is marginalized. IBSA's immediate need for representation, as of right, in all those sports in which it forms a significant proportion of the competitors and has its own set of clearly established classifications, would be satisfied by the assignment of a single member on each relevant SAEC. It is unrealistic to expect that Blind representation can be achieved through the votes of the overwhelming locomotor/functional majority, and it is therefore cynical to speak of the virtues of "democracy" within IPC. The challenge for the IPC is to return to the documents of its constitution and bylaws that govern its activities and to seek a way of ensuring that the interest of minority groups have a place within its structures at the sports-technical level.