Evolution of classification

As the Paralympic Movement matured, sport was no longer an extension of rehabilitation and alone became important.

The focus on sport, rather than rehabilitation, drove the development of what commonly became referred to as functional classification systems.

In functional systems, the main factors that determine a class are not diagnosis and medical evaluation, but how much the impairment of a person impacts upon sports performance.

This process got introduced in most sports in the course of the 1980’s. There was however a considerable debate surrounding the relative merits of the medical and functional approaches that caused the transition to be slow.