Forget the Humans: Here come the Superhumans!

So goes the strapline from the remarkable short film advertisement of the 

UK Channel 4 coverage of the London Paralympics.

Tomorrow from 8pm local time the biggest and most watched Paralympics of all time will be launched with an Opening Ceremony at the same London Olympic Stadium which saw the  Ceremonies of the XXXth Olympic Games within this past month.

But if you wondered how the different classes of ability are decided upon for contests within the Paralympics, there is a classification system which UK Broadcaster Channel 4 has attempted to decipher to make viewing and understanding easier: the Lexicon Decoder, or LEXI for short.

It has been created by broadcaster and Paralympic gold medallist Giles Long, and is a graphic-heavy system of classification which identifies severe to no impairments with a stick man and traffic light colouring system to simplify one of the great contentious issues of paralympian sport. It is often compared to the weight or age classes that exist in able-bodied sport, but is complex and changeable.

Helping with the classification for the International Paralympics Committee (IPC) are physiotherapists like Rob Kinder, who explained his role to the CHartered Society of Physiotherapy's 'Frontline' magazine recently in ensuring a fair and level playing field  for competitors (sadly unavailable to link to). As a full-time neurophysio with Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation,  Rob is tasked with classifying athletes with physical impairment as opposed to intellectual or visual impairments, and has to rate how they affect daily function.

The classification panel is usually made up of a doctor, physio and coach, and the athlete will have either a confirmed class status where the condition is unlikely to change, or a reviewable status for those with a variable condition subject to potential change or deterioration.

There are three stages to the classification, with medical histories and benchmark testing leading to observation of the sporting activity in training and warm-up, then onto competitive sport itself when there is high performance activity undertaken to the best of the athlete's ability with less likelihood of any attempts to 'cheat the system' than may happen in a training environment for any benefit of the classification system.

'Thanks for the Warm Up' Channel 4 Ad...

So for viewers that need to slake their thirst for international sporting competition fresh from the Olympics can watch armed with the LEXI, and with a fresh appreciation for these super humans, some of whom will not even have had a classification at the time of the last Games due to the fact their injuries have been only sustained since Beijing in 2008. Sobering but inspirational.