‘Mind-blowing’: the Paralympians exaggerating impairments to win

Samantha Hawley: Hi, I’m Sam Hawley, coming to you from Gadigal Land. This is ABC News Daily. The Paralympics transformed the sporting arena for those with disabilities. But now the integrity of the event has been brought into question. A Four Corners investigation has uncovered allegations of athletes exaggerating or even lying about their impairments to give them a better chance of winning. Today, reporter Hagar Cohen on how the rules are being bent and broken to the detriment of the majority of competitors doing the right thing.

Samantha Hawley: Hagar The Paralympics, like the Olympics, they’re a big deal, aren’t they? They attract huge amounts of money.

Hagar Cohen: Absolutely. It’s actually the third biggest sporting event in the world. So just after the Olympics and FIFA in terms of attendance, Yeah. So people love it.

Samantha Hawley: And Australia’s also done pretty well at these Paralympics across history. I mean, in Tokyo in 2021, we took home 21 gold medals. Stuart Jones, a para cyclist, was at those games. Who is he?

Hagar Cohen: So Stuart Jones is a para cyclist. He was a non-disabled person up until 2014 when he was on his bike, clipped a parked car and crashed into another car. So it was a serious accident. He sustained a spinal cord injury. And initially the predictions were that he may not even be able to walk again. And so that time was a horrible time for him and his partner Sandy Kryzius.

Sandy Kryzius, Stuart’s former partner: Because it wasn’t. A complete spinal injury. They could never tell how much swelling will improve. You know, he’s he’s the feeling and his ability to walk.

Hagar Cohen: I mean, he was very determined, according to Sandy Kryzius and everybody around him at the time. And he was back racing on his two wheeled bike by the following year with his local cycling club in Newcastle.

Samantha Hawley: All right. Okay. So you’re telling me he’s fully recovered? But he also then went on to compete at the Paralympics in Tokyo in 2021. So you need to explain that.

Hagar Cohen: Okay. So he hasn’t fully recovered. What happened was that he recovered enough to be able to race very competently and even win some of the races with his cycling club in Newcastle.

Sandy Kryzius, Stuart’s former partner: People were just so blown away by his ability on the bike. He had returned to racing strong and if not better than what he was before the accident.

Hagar Cohen: In the Paralympics. You know, there’s what’s known as the classification system. And so it recognises that not all impairments are the same. And what they do is they measure what is the impact of your of an athlete’s impairment on their sport, and then they divided them into classes. And so the trike division is reserved for athletes who cannot ride a two wheeled bike. That is very clear in the rules. And yet we found substantial evidence showing that for a period of three years, three and a half years after his accident in 2014, Stuart Jones raced hundreds of kilometres on his two wheeled bike, which is against the rules.

Samantha Hawley: Right. So he’s really, really competent on a two wheel bike, but he ends up competing at the Tokyo 2021 Paralympics on a trike bike. And that, as you’ve said, is really breaking the rules. When did his former partner start to think that something wasn’t quite right there?

Hagar Cohen: Yeah. So, I mean, I guess the first time she says she understood what really was going on was when she attended a para cycling event. She says an Aussie cycling manager there responsible for selection of athletes for the Paralympics was there and talked to Stuart Jones about how he would be selected to the Paralympics. And Sandy said she just said, But he can ride a two wheeled bike. Why would he be riding a trike?

Sandy Kryzius, Stuart’s former partner: But Stuart can ride a two wheel, a bike. And her response was, which I remember quite clearly, was No, he can’t. And then Stuart kind of indicated to me, you know, stop talking.

Hagar Cohen: We did contact Aussie Cycling and asked them about it. They said none of their staff had known about Stuart’s history with writing racing a two wheeled bike after his accident.

Samantha Hawley: Well, what has Stuart Jones had to say about all of this?

Hagar Cohen: Well, Stuart Jones refused to engage with us, and he’s talking to us through his lawyers who are basically saying that he will be making no comment.

Samantha Hawley: Mhm. Okay. The main point here though is of course that if an athlete is classified incorrectly, they’re competing where they shouldn’t be competing or they shouldn’t be competing at all. It’s a significant disadvantage to other athletes.

Hagar Cohen: This is a really good point. And we also spoke to athletes who feel that they’ve been disadvantaged by this system and harmed by it.

Amanda Fraser, Paralympian: I feel sad for the athletes, the ones that miss out on their moment like I did.

Hagar Cohen: And this is basically goes right to the heart of why we decided that these stories really in the public interest. It’s not about accusing people of cheating. It’s more about what about those genuine athletes who have their impairments. They’re not faking it. They’re not exaggerating their symptoms, but their chances of competing and winning are taken away by those people who are who are in the wrong classification. And that’s unfair.

Samantha Hawley: Yeah, Really, really unfair. So. Hagar let’s talk more about this classification system, because you’ve also spoken to other Australian athletes about how this system can in ways be manipulated.

Hagar Cohen: Exactly. And there are, you know, widespread concerns that the classification system as it stands is not robust enough. For example, we spoke to gold medallist Maddison Elliott. She’s one of Australia’s most high profile Paralympians. She won nine medals. Four of them were gold. She said it’s quite easy to exaggerate symptoms during classification.

Maddison Elliott, Paralympian: There are people who are just doing it because they’re not winning in their classification. They want to compete in a classification that they can win in.

Hagar Cohen: Another example of a practice that appears to be quite common is were athletes, particularly with neurological disorders such as cerebral palsy, are instructed by coaching staff to fatigue themselves ahead of classification so that their symptoms appear like they have more impact during the classification itself. We spoke to two athletes who competed against each other in Beijing 2008. They were both in athletics, discus throwers and separately both said that they were instructed by their own coaches to do that, to fatigue themselves so that they appear more impaired than they actually are.

Amanda Fraser, Paralympian: You are taught to exert yourself and be fatigued and I guess be the worst version of yourself at the time.

Hagar Cohen: So you were actually told to fatigue yourself before participation?

Amanda Fraser, Paralympian: Yeah.

Hagar Cohen: Is that every time?

Amanda Fraser, Paralympian: Probably, yeah, to a point, yeah.

Hagar Cohen: You’re coached to do that? Everybody?

Amanda Fraser, Paralympian: Yeah, everybody does that.

Hagar Cohen: You know, both of these athletes were quite young, and if you’re instructed to do that, you know, as a 16 year old, for example, who has no experience in elite sport before, you just follow those instructions. And that’s so it’s important to, I guess, note that it’s a systemic issue of of teams, of coaches, performance managers, you know, national sporting bodies that encourage that. And that’s why it’s such a big problem and really hard to get rid of.

Samantha Hawley: So, Hagar I mean, it all sounds pretty concerning, but how widespread is this?

Hagar Cohen: Well, according to insiders in the Paralympic movement, a lot of them think it’s quite widespread and they’re very concerned about it. Interestingly, the International Paralympic Committee is now going through a process of review. And as part of that process, they invited feedback. We read through all of their feedback, and it was quite alarming people who are really invested in the Paralympic movement who are, you know, very high important positions, were really concerned about this problem. For instance, one of them says that classification tends to promote cheating. A swimming official said that one of the greatest concern is the increasing incidence of intentional misrepresentation and the sense of powerlessness to do anything about it. Another said there are no repercussions for those who cheat and that athletes coaches are aware of this and they’re using it to their advantage. So we spoke to Jane Buckley. She’s a former chief classifier and a former medical director of the Australian Paralympic team. She’s been part of the movement for for three decades. She’s speaking out about this issue for the first time on Four Corners. She says that the levels of intentional misrepresentation are so high, she calls it mind blowing.

Jane Buckley, former Paralympic classifier: I was astounded. I can remember thinking at the time this organisation is more concerned about medals than doing the right thing.

Hagar Cohen: What she suggests She thinks the only thing that that can fix this problem is that classification is actually taken out of the hands of the International Paralympic Committee and given to an independent body. So in the Olympics, WADA, the anti-doping agency, is independent to the Olympics committee. Jane Buckley thinks the same thing needs to happen with the Paralympics, but there’s a lot of resistance for that idea.

Samantha Hawley: This could really Hagar, damage the credibility of the Paralympics, right? You’ve actually interviewed the former chief executive of the IPC, and he’s even worried about it.

Hagar Cohen: Yes, this was quite the interview, to be honest. We went all the way to Switzerland to to meet Xavier Gonzalez.

Xavier Gonzalez, chief executive, International Paralympic Committee 2004-2019: Hi. Nice to meet you.

Hagar Cohen: Nice meeting you too.

Hagar Cohen: He was the CEO of the International Paralympic Committee for 15 years. He was quite candid, saying that cheating or, you know, intentional misrepresentation by athletes is a problem within the Paralympics.

Xavier Gonzalez, chief executive, International Paralympic Committee 2004-2019: Yes, it was a problem or an issue. Coaches and the administrators and everyone knew that this was something that the IPC was concerned about.

Hagar Cohen: You know, I asked him if he takes responsibility for the cheating that occurred when he was the CEO and he took responsibility for it.

Xavier Gonzalez, chief executive, International Paralympic Committee 2004-2019: I never wanted to put things under the carpet, but yes, ultimately it’s something has failed somewhere. I mean, with the CEO is where stops the buck.

Samantha Hawley: Um, it’s really important, isn’t it, that this is fixed for the athletes, as you said before, who are competing and they’re doing the right thing?

Hagar Cohen: Absolutely. And I think one of the strongest people who talks about it in our program is Peter Brooks, another former gold medallist of Paracyclist who’s just outraged by this. It’s kind of like an open secret within the Paralympic movement. And he just thinks, you know, that it’s it’s greedy, it’s wrong. And why would you do that? Why would you rob genuine Paralympians of their chances to win?

Peter Brooks, Paralympic gold medallist: I would like to question the people that have this greater ability to go, ‘Are you proud of yourself? Are you happy to be there?’ The founders of the Paralympic movement long ago would be disgusted and rolling in their graves that this is what it’s come to.

Samantha Hawley: Hagar Cohen is a reporter with the ABC’s Investigative Unit. You can watch her full report tonight on Four Corners on ABC TV at 8 p.m. or catch it on iView. This episode was produced by Flint Duxfield and Chris Dengate, who also did the mix. Our supervising producer is Stephen Smiley. I’m Sam Hawley. ABC News Daily will be back again tomorrow. Thanks for listening.