“Mixed Ability” rowing has been emerging as a third segment of disabled rowing – alongside “Pararowing” and “Adaptive Rowing” for a number of years now. While organisations like International Mixed Ability Sport (3 of IMAS’s 4 Ambassadors are from the rowing community) and rowing clubs like Stratford-upon-Avon have actively promoted it, it has largely been absent from British Rowing competitions. Most of the IMAS rowing regattas have been elsewhere in Europe like Cork, Ireland and Turin, Italy.
“Mixed Ability” refers to individuals rowing with impairments which are not included in either of the International (“PR”) or British Rowing (“AR”) classifications. Prominent examples include:
- Learning Impairment: While BR does have an AR3-LI classification, the criteria is an IQ test which not all individuals have been assessed with and is in itself not an ideal measure of cognitive impairment.
- Autism: An example of where cognitive impairment is often not well captured by an IQ test is ASD where social and emotion complexities are more of an issue than the intellectual ones.
- Deafness / Hearing Impairment: While hearing impairment doesn’t affect the action of rowing per se, can affect coaching, training and competition making it more suitable for some HI athletes to be a part of an adaptive programe.
- Epilepsy: In most cases, athletes with epilepsy do not present any permanent physical or cognitive impairments that would qualify them for para or adaptive classification. However, their condition imposes some very specific safety requirements which often an adaptive outing or programme is better set up to accommodate.
- Aggregate/Marginal Impairments: Some individuals manage a cocktail of impairments none of which are severe enough to pass classification, but taken in aggregate make it very difficult for the athlete to row in a conventional context.
Last month’s Marlow Town Regatta formally introduced Mixed Ability racing into its adaptive division with a “MA” Women’s 1x race and 2 “MA” Supported Adaptive races. It managed to produce well matched competitions doing a couple of things in the draw:
- Similar impairments: Put similar impairments (eg. neurodiversity) together to avoid apples-to-oranges issues of imbalance.
- Time handicap system: Use the time handicap system to level the playing field.
The bottom-line protocol is that if all of the competitors (typically only 2 in the adaptive community) concur on the matchups and the time handicaps, then the competition is good to go.