The wait is finally over, as the 2024 Paralympics finally began today (29 August) and will last until the beginning of next month (8 September).
There will now be 22 sports in which athletes will compete, and spectators around the world will quickly notice that there are several different categories for each event.
And one of the very first sports is para-swimming, which starts on Thursday (August 29).
What do the codes “S” and “SB” mean in Paralympic swimming events? (Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
To protect the “integrity of fair competition”, all Paralympic sports have a system in place that “is designed to ensure that victory depends on sporting factors such as skill, fitness, strength, endurance, tactical ability and mental concentration – the same factors that are crucial to the sporting success of able-bodied athletes”.
There are ten “allowable disabilities” for Paralympic swimmers, including limited muscle strength, involuntary movements, limited passive range of motion, muscle tension, limb weakness, uncoordinated movements, leg length discrepancy, short stature, intellectual disability and visual impairment.
The viewer will notice that the sport class names in swimming consist of a prefix “S” or “SB” and a number – but what does that mean?
Well, according to World Para Swimming, the prefixes represent the swimming styles and the numbers indicate the sport classes.
In short, “S” stands for freestyle, butterfly and backstroke, while “SB” stands for breaststroke.
However, “SM” is awarded to athletes who compete in medley events.
There are 10 “permissible disabilities” for Paralympic swimmers (Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
For athletes with physical disabilities, there are ten different sports classes numbered one to ten, while athletes with visual impairments compete in three sports classes from S/SB11 to S/SB13.
“Athletes with different disabilities compete against each other because the classification into sports classes is not based on the disability itself, but on the impact of the disability on swimming,” the organization states.
In order to “ensure fair competition”, athletes in the S/SB11 sports class are required to wear blackened protective goggles.
And to ensure safety, all S/SB11 swimmers must use a tapper – an assistant outside the pool who gives the athlete a tapper as they approach one end of the pool.
Swimmers in the S/SB12 and S/SB13 classes have the option to decide whether they want to use one or not.
S14 swimmers have an intellectual disability that typically causes athletes to have difficulty with pattern recognition, sequencing, and memory, or to have slower reaction time, which generally impacts athletic performance.