As Fernando Rufino reels off the harrowing list of mishaps and injuries which have marked his life, there comes a degree where you start to wonder if you’ve gotten been transported to some type of alternate dimension.

Rufino is certainly one of Brazil's most famous Paralympians because of his canoeing achievements. He is nicknamed the “Iron Cowboy” in reference to each his past as a rodeo rider and the metal plates used to bolster his spine. He sustained this injury when he fell from a moving bus on the age of 21 and his body was crushed by the wheels.

That alone could be an excellent story. But you haven't even heard the half of it.

He was once trampled by an 800 kg bull and dragged along the bottom by a galloping horse. There were also automobile, motorcycle and horse riding accidents.

“I broke my thumb,” Rufino says. “I cut off the tip of that finger, and a small sawblade fell on my face and penetrated right under my eye. My brother and I always tried to recreate fight scenes from movies. One time he hit me with a wooden board and cut my head open.”

“When I was a teenager, a bull broke my jaw. Then I got hit by a bus. I drove my motorcycle into a tree at 100 km/h. I was lifting weights in the gym when a metal bar fell on me and broke my nose. I broke two ribs from overtraining. I trained for two weeks with a broken leg and thought it was just a muscle problem…

“Then lightning struck me.”

Flash?

“Yes! On my doorstep. I felt the energy undergo me. I used to be thrown into the air. I landed on my neck and cut my elbow. I used to be curled up on the ground for about quarter-hour, my muscles completely cramped. For three days afterward I smelled something burning.

“I love it when I have accidents. Then I just have more stories to tell. I'm a wilderness guy, a warrior who wants to win in life, a cowboy who won gold at the Paralympics.”

And today, the reigning Va'a 200m VL2 Paralympic champion and three-time world champion will enter the water to defend his title.

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Rufino grew up on a conventional farm in Mato Grosso do Sul in mid-western Brazil. He and his parents still live there with horses and bulls. The money Rufino earns from canoeing is invested within the property, which they manage in accordance with his grandparents' lifestyle.

Rufino became a rodeo rider because he dreamed of traveling the world, but after his spinal cord injury, he knew his profession was over.

With the assistance of his father, he learned to walk again on the farm and spent almost the complete rehabilitation period at home, riding horses and swimming within the reservoir. “Animals are part of my story and who I am,” he says. “They helped me walk again.”

However, Rufino still desired to travel the world and sport was one strategy to try this. A friend found a middle that trained disabled athletes. He tried just a few sports after which on August 7, 2012 at 8 a.m. – he still remembers the date exactly – he tried para-canoeing.

“On the water, I forget about my disability,” he says. “I feel like everyone else. If you saw me paddling next to someone who doesn't have a disability, they wouldn't know which of us is disabled. It's liberating.”

The 39-year-old missed the 2016 Rio Paralympics as a result of hypertension and hypertrophy of his heart, but his technique improved because the training load was lighter. When he made his Paralympic debut in Tokyo in 2020, which was postponed for 12 months due to global pandemic, he made a press release together with his tufted silver hair and have become the primary Brazilian to win a gold medal on the Paralympic Games.

Cheered on by his family on the house farm, Rufino will compete against his good friend and fellow countryman Igor Tofalini, also a former rodeo cowboy who was his best man at his wedding in 2018. They live, eat and train together on the National Canoe Center in Ilha Comprida, Brazil. On the water they’re rivals, but off it they’re good friends, and so they share every thing.

“If he wins, we'll celebrate with a barbecue. The same goes if I win. But the gold and silver medals are ours.”

Bald-headed, bushy-bearded Rufino, who keeps his cowboy hat in his room within the Paralympic Village and annoys everyone with the “sadest country music” on race day, is mentally and physically ready for the heats on Friday and the ultimate on Sunday, should he qualify.

“Without wanting to sound conceited, I have already won everything there is to win in my sport. I believe I can leave here as a two-time Paralympic champion.”

Rufino says the 2028 Los Angeles Games will likely be his last Paralympics when he can be 43 years old, however the only thing that matters to him is being remembered because the “true Iron Cowboy.”

“I'm definitely going to die old. I've tried to die young, but I've never managed it.”

More than 4,000 athletes with physical, visual and mental disabilities will compete in 22 sports. the 2024 Paralympic Games Paris.

Within these 22 sports, there might be 549 medal events. This number seems high, as several sports have multiple “Sports courses”, which serve to supply equal opportunities to athletes with different disabilities.

Some athletes compete in classes based on their specific impairment. Other classes include athletes with a variety of various impairment types that end in similar levels of “Activity restriction” said the International Paralympic Committee.

For example, swimmers with physical disabilities compete in categories “S1” to “S10”. The “S” stands for swimming, the number is the game class. The lower the numberthe more severe the impairment. Class S10 can subsequently include participants with hip impairments, foot amputations or cerebral palsy. They all compete in the identical group because their different disabilities affect their swimming abilities in similar ways.

The IPC sees this just like the grouping of athletes by age, gender and weight.

Despite the rigor and training that goes into the classification process, problems do arise. Sport classes will be broad, putting some participants at a drawback. Classification tests will be tiring or stressful for athletes. And classification errors can occur that place athletes within the improper class.

Then there may be the issue of “intentional misrepresentation.” Over the years, some athletes have exaggerated their disability to realize a competitive advantage, cheating in classification to enhance their probabilities of winning against competitors with greater disabilities.

Intentional misrepresentation was described as the best threat on the integrity of parasports.

Build a much bigger tent

As I describe intimately in my book:Regulatory authorities“Ludwig Guttmann, a Jewish neurologist who left Nazi Germany shortly before the outbreak of World War II, is taken into account the daddy of the Paralympic Games.

Guttmann founded the National Centre for Spinal Injuries at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury, England, where he introduced an exercise programme as a part of the rehabilitation process for his patients.

As Guttmann later wroteSport is “the most natural form of physical recovery”. It also has “the psychological effect of restoring the joy of life and contributing to social reintegration”.

In 1948, Guttmann organized the primary Stoke Mandeville Games for paraplegics, through which 14 men and two women competed in archery. Originally, the games were reserved for wheelchair athletes. Over the years, this system was expanded to incorporate latest sports and athletes with different disabilities.

The 1976 Paralympics – then called the Olympics for the Physically Disabled – introduced sports for athletes with amputations and visual impairmentsFour years later, athletes diagnosed with cerebral palsy were allowed to take part in the 1980 Games. In 1984, the organizers introduced the competitions “Les Autres” – French for “the others” – a category that included athletes with “movement disabilities” resembling short stature, multiple sclerosis and leg length discrepancies. Athletes with mental disabilities – for individuals with a documented IQ below 75 – took part for the primary time within the 1996 Summer Paralympics in Atlanta.

By bearing in mind various kinds of disabilities, parasports organizers began to search out ways to streamline competitions while maintaining fairness.

One solution was classification.

A careful classification process

The current IPC Athlete Classification Code describes a multi-stage classification process.

There is a panel that features medical classifiers – often a physical therapist, a physician, a physician assistant, or an occupational therapist. There are also technical classifiers who’ve expertise in the game and will include coaches, scientists, or physical education teachers.

Before a contest, the classifiers first check whether the athlete has the “Minimum impairment criteria”, that are set by the international federations of every sport. These involve reviewing medical records and detailed training and performance histories. It may include easy assessments of height, limb differences, muscle strength and stiffness, and range of motion.

Next, classifiers perform a series of sport and disability-specific tests to find out the athlete's sport class. Finally, they confirm their decision by observing the athlete during competition. In other words, they check that they got it right and that the athlete was honest of their assessment.

The classification is crucial. “Without it” argues Paralympian and medical anthropologist P. David Howe“Paralympic sport might not exist.”

Outsmarting the system

Despite the accuracy of the classification process, intentional misrepresentations occur.

There are accounts of athletes who overexert themselves before being classified to make them appear weaker than they are surely. They might stiffen their muscles with cold showers, jump within the snow, or wrap their legs and arms with bandages which can be too tight. Athletes could pretend be less coordinated or weaker, simulated slower response times or pretend to have poor vision.

The most notorious case of intentional misrepresentation The Spanish basketball team that won gold within the mental disability category on the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney was affected.

Shortly after the Games ended, a team member announced that 10 of the team’s 12 athletes weren’t actually affectedThe Spanish Association of Athletes with Intellectual Disabilities, he explained, has deliberately recruited non-disabled athletes so as to “win medals and get more sponsors”. As a result, sport is just not open to athletes with mental disabilities. only appeared within the Paralympic program again in 2012.

More recently The IPC stripped Indian discus thrower Vinod Kumar of his award his bronze medal on the 2020 Paralympics. Kumar was to the F52 classwhich is meant for athletes in field competitions who compete in a seated position as a result of “limb deficiencies, leg length discrepancies, limited muscular strength or limited range of motion”.

However, it was observed that Kumar competed with less impairment than he had shown in the course of the classification process.

The IPC then banned him from participating in the game for 2 years. If he commits a second offence, he faces a lifetime ban.

One rotten apple doesn’t spoil the entire basket

It is unimaginable to say how often intentional misrepresentations occur, partly because proving them will be difficult.

In the run-up to the 2016 Paralympics, the IPC investigated allegations against greater than 80 athletes from 24 countries in six sports. In each case couldn’t find any evidence of fraud beyond an affordable doubt.

It is vital to keep in mind that most Paralympians undergo the classification process with integrity. It is like all type of cheating: should the few athletes who do something outrageous bring all the competition into disrepute?

Of course, this risk all the time exists. And the complex classification process also creates opportunities.

Most importantly, deliberate misrepresentation mustn’t prevent viewers from seeing among the world’s best athletes. The “Para” in Paralympic indicates that that they run “parallel” to so-called non-disabled sports.

But comparing Para athletes to “non-disabled” athletes doesn't do them justice. Just have a look at a snippet of the Paralympics and also you'll see that these bodies are greater than capable.

The opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games took place on Wednesday, August 28, 2024. The Paralympic Games will run until September 8 and produce together as much as 4,400 athletes from all over the world.