Extreme measures to get an edge
Paralympic Officials will be carefully monitoring Athletes at the London games, to check for 'boosting.' A practice where some athletes with spinal injuries deliberately hurt themselves to raise their blood pressure and get an advantage.
Source: The World Today | Duration: 3min 44sec
ELEANOR HALL: The Paralympic Opening Ceremony is less than 17 hours away and officials are now testing not just for banned substances, but also for a practice known as "boosting".
This is an extreme performance enhancing practice where athletes with a spinal injury, deliberately hurt themselves in order to perform better.
Martin Cuddihy explains.
MARTIN CUDDIHY: The Paralympic flame has been lit in southern England, ahead of the start of the Games.
This morning, Australia's flag bearer, wheelchair rugby player Greg Smith, summed up the spirit of the Paralympics for ABC Radio.
GREG SMITH: You do the things you do because you love to do them, and if you do them the hardest that you can, and at the end of the day you can still smile whether you win or lose and be proud and pleased with what you've done, then I think you've gone a long way to achieving the goals that you probably set out.
MARTIN CUDDIHY: But there's a performance-enhancing issue smouldering behind the scenes, and it's likely to make you squirm in your seat.
When a person suffers a spinal injury, their blood pressure drops and it stays low.
That can be a real disadvantage for some athletes, so they try and shock the body into reacting and induce a common condition called autonomic dysreflexia.
It increases blood pressure and the heart rate.
Professor Andrei Krassioukov teaches medicine at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
ANDREI KRASSIOUKOV: As a physician I totally understand why these Olympians doing this. And as a scientist I'm obviously horrified.
MARTIN CUDDIHY: To bring on the condition, competitors deliberately hurt themselves by breaking a toe, using tight leg straps, or in extreme cases, by twisting the scrotum.
It's a practice known by athletes as boosting. It was banned in 2004.
Athletes don't feel the pain because of their injury, but it's not without risk.
Autonomic dysreflexia can cause stroke, internal haemorrhaging and even death.
Former Paralympian Karni Liddell says in simple terms, boosting is cheating.
KARNI LIDDELL: Boosting's one of those things that's been around for as long as I've been around for, which is a long time, and it's just one of those things, it's like anything with cheating and sport.
It's just a different way I guess, a very unique Paralympic way to cheat in sport and quite hard to detect as you can probably imagine.
MARTIN CUDDIHY: Is it something that was spoken about openly within the Paralympic community?
KARNI LIDDELL: Definitely not. I never came across it but you can probably imagine though in swimming it wouldn't help at all but I did hear about boosting more in the sports like the wheelchair rugby or the wheelchair basketball but I can tell you now I've never witnessed it with Australian athletes.
And I think our athletes are too body conscious and too health conscious to do that to themselves. You run a fairly big risk of going too far as you can probably imagine.
MARTIN CUDDIHY: The World Anti-Doping Agency interviewed 99 athletes with spinal injuries around the time of the Beijing Paralympics.
It found that more than half had heard about boosting, but nearly a fifth had used it, even though they knew the dangers.
The report stated:
EXCERPT FROM WORLD ANTI-DOPING AGENCY REPORT (voiceover): This finding should be of concern to the athletes, coaches and trainers, as well as the governing bodies of the Paralympic sport organisations.
MARTIN CUDDIHY: So great is the problem that Professor Andrei Krassioukov believes there should be another classification, so that athletes don't have to expose themselves to such risky tactics.
ANDREI KRASSIOUKOV: I hope if we can find addition to Paralympic classification and gives them points for their poor blood pressure control then they will not require to do this boosting.
MARTIN CUDDIHY: The International Paralympics Committee has promised to carefully monitor those events where boosting can give athletes an advantage.
ELEANOR HALL: Martin Cuddihy reporting.