ED WARNER says the performances of athletes at the Rio Paralympics shows the sport is continuing to develop at pace, writes Stuart Weir.
The complexity of classifications within disability athletics means that there were 177 medal events in the Rio Paralympics, more than three times the number in the Olympic athletics programme.
While an athlete can only compete against those in the race, detractors say Paralympic medals are too easy to win. For instance, a significant number of events go straight to a final due to the small number of entrants, such as the T34 800m in which Hannah Cockcroft completed a set of three gold medals in the T34 category – a classification for athletes with cerebral palsy or similar neurological conditions.