MAY 5 - BRITISH officials are to campaign for athletes with intellectual disabiilities to be allowed back into the Paralympics in time for London 2012, insidethegames can reveal.

 

Athletes with intellectual disabilities were first allowed to compete at the Paralympics in Atlanta in 1996 but were excluded after the 2000 Sydney Games.

 

But Mike Brace, the chairman of the British Paralympic Association (BPA), has told insidethegames that he is hoping he can persuade the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) to reinstate the category for London.

 

He said: "We support there inclusion and we are pushing for them to be included in 2012.

 

"But it has to be on a fair and equitable class system and everyone must be competing on a level playing field."

 

The category was dropped aftrer controversy at the 2000 Paralympics in Sydney when Spain were stripped of their basketball gold medals shortly after the Games closed when Carlos Ribagorda, a member of the victorious team and an undercover journalist, revealed to the Spanish business magazine Capital that most of his colleagues had not undergone medical tests to ensure that they had a disability.

 

The IPC investigated the claims and found that required mental tests, which should show that competitors have an IQ no more than 70, were not conducted by the Spanish Paralympic Committee (CPE).

 

The IPC announced in 2003 that, due to serious difficulties in determining the eligibility of athletes, it was suspending all official sporting activities involving an intellectual disability and the category was dropped from the 2004 Athens Paralympics.

 

There is a growing lobby, however, for it to restored to the Paralympics and the IPC have said they will study the matter after the Beijing Games.

 

Brace said: "We need to come up with a system that is easily applied and can be rigorously tested.

 

"There is the fear that we do not have that then the Paralympic Movement can again be brought into disrepute but 98 per cent of athletes are competing fairly.

 

"They are being penalised for something that is not their fault."

 

It is estimated that 1.5 million people in Britain have a learning disability and in February the category was added to the UK School Games for the first time.