The seven sport classes, one by one

Classification is the part of Para sport that decides who competes against whom. It exists so that a result is explained by skill, fitness, power, endurance, tactics and focus rather than by how much an impairment affects a body on the day. Every Para sport does this differently, because the same impairment changes performance differently in each sport.

In shooting Para sport there are seven sport classes. Here they are, with the athlete description the federation publishes, and nothing added.

The seven classes

SH1 (Pistol). One class covers pistol events, designated for athletes with upper and/or lower limb impairment.

SH1 (Rifle). Designated for athletes with lower limb impairment in rifle events.

SH2 (Rifle). Rifle only. Designated for athletes with upper limb impairment that requires them to use a shooting stand for support, whether or not they also have lower limb impairment.

SG-S (Trap). Athletes with poor balance and/or trunk stability, competing from a wheelchair or seat in a standard seated position. Their impairment is in the lower limb(s), with no functional limitation in the upper limbs.

SG-L (Trap). Athletes with good balance and trunk function, competing standing, with lower limb impairment and no functional limitation in the upper limbs.

SG-U (Trap). Athletes with good balance and trunk function, competing standing, with impairment in the non-shooting arm.

SH-VI (Rifle). Allocated to athletes with a vision impairment, for competition in 10m rifle events.

Notice that SH1 appears twice, once for pistol and once for rifle. The label is the same; the event discipline is not. If someone says “I am SH1” without saying which discipline, you do not yet know enough.

The impairments that are eligible

Having an impairment is not by itself enough to compete in Para sport. An athlete must have one of the eligible impairment types and meet the minimum impairment criteria that the sport’s rules set for that impairment. The eight eligible types in shooting Para sport are:

• Impaired muscle power
• Limb deficiency
• Hypertonia
• Ataxia
• Athetosis
• Impaired passive range of movement
• Leg length difference
• Vision impairment

What classification is for

The purpose is not to rank athletes by severity. The IPC describes classification as grouping athletes by the degree of activity limitation their impairment causes, which is only loosely comparable to grouping by age, sex or weight. The comparison is intentional: a class is a competition group, not a medical category, and it does not carry an implication about how serious someone’s condition is.

Two consequences follow, and both are easy to get wrong:

1. Classification is sport-specific. An athlete may meet the criteria for shooting and not for another Para sport, or the reverse. A classification from one sport does not transfer to another.
2. Class status is not permanent by default. Para sport classification has a status per athlete that determines whether a class is reviewed and when, and the rules describe protest and appeal routes. The details sit in the federation’s classification rules, not in a summary page.

Where the binding text lives

The overview page is explicit that it is a brief overview and “in no way legally binding”: the sport-specific classification rules take precedence in every case. Those rules are published with the World Shooting Para Sport rules and regulations, implemented from February 2019 at the time of writing, and the federation also publishes the medical diagnostics forms for physical impairment and for vision impairment athletes.

That is why this article names classes and impairment types but does not try to predict a class. Only a classification panel can do that, using its own documentation.

A note on how not to use this page

Do not use it to argue that someone “must be” a particular class, and do not use it to pre-empt a classifier’s decision. Use it to arrive at the first conversation knowing which of the seven classes is even plausible for a given discipline and impairment — that alone saves a lot of confusion.

Sources

• International Paralympic Committee / World Shooting Para Sport, Classification in Shooting Para Sport — the seven sport classes, the eight eligible impairments, the purpose of classification, the non-binding status of the overview, the February 2019 classification rules and the diagnostics forms.
• World Shooting Para Sport, Rules and Regulations — location of the binding classification rules and appendices.
• World Shooting Para Sport, About the sport — the disciplines each class competes in.