Deaf and hard of hearing excluded from Paralympic Games, the reason is surprising

Deaf and hard of hearing athletes are not present in Paris for the Paralympic Games.

The Paralympic Games officially opened on August 28 and run until September 8 in Paris, following a successful Olympic Games. The 4,400 athletes competing in the various events of the Paralympic Games are grouped into different classifications according to their disability.

There are many physical and mental disabilities, and the classifications take into account both the type of disability and the impact of the latter on the athletes’ sporting performance. There can thus be more than twenty or thirty different classes in certain disciplines, such as para athletics or para swimming.

However, no Paralympic Games event has a classification for deaf and hard of hearing athletes. And for good reason, they do not participate in the Paralympic Games, but in another competition: the Deaflympics. With more than 2,500 athletes, the Deaflympics are a real competition in their own right created even before the Paralympic Games. The first edition of the Deaflympics was held in 1924 in Paris and has been held every four years since.

This separation between the Paralympic Games and the Deaflympics does not bother deaf and hard of hearing athletes, quite the contrary. “Within the deaf community, support for separate Games is overwhelming. Deaf people do not see themselves as disabled, especially physically. Rather, we see ourselves as part of a cultural and linguistic minority,” explains the International Deaf Sports Committee (ISSC).

Indeed, unlike many Paralympic sports, the Deaflympics disciplines do not require any adaptation of rules or equipment. The only difference with the Olympic Games events is the replacement of sound signals, as for the start of athletics races, by visual signals.

The rules for participating in the Deaflympics are quite simple. To be allowed to compete, athletes must have a hearing loss of at least 55 decibels and not wear a hearing aid during the events. The next edition of the Deaflympics will be held in 2025, in Tokyo.