Paralympians are scaling new highs, and technology is lending a helping hand

Bengaluru: Seventeen-year-old armless Indian Paralympian archer, Sheetal Devi, wowed billions around the world when she scored a perfect 10 at the ongoing Paris Paralympics 2024, winning a bronze.

Devi's video clip, showcasing her precision by the use just her right foot, jaw support, and shoulder movement, went viral. Her moves were aptly summed up by Erik Solheim, Norway's environment minister, who wrote on X: "This is beyond possible! Sheetal Devi is poetry in motion..."

Devi is one of 84 Indian athletes at the Paralympics. At the time of writing this piece, India 15th with 15 medals–three golds, five silvers and seven bronzes–a tally that can only improve by the time the games close on 8 September.

By comparison, India won only six medals–a silver and five bronzes–at the recently-ended Paris Olympics.

Could it be that India's Paralympic athletes are faring better than able-bodied ones? The answer is nuanced. Countries that do well in the Olympics also tend to do well in the Paralympics, reflecting an overall sporting accent. In that sense India's medal haul across both games probably reflects a relative parity.

The difference? In a word, technology.

But it would be a stretch to claim that technology gives Paralympians an unfair advantage over able-bodied athletes. For tech plays a massive role in able-bodied Olympics too–think of the constantly evolving material used to fabricate bicycles for instance.

If anything, Sheetal Devi's achievement illustrates other-worldly skills and will-power, rather than tech.

Tech helps, but not always, and not in all disciplines.

Turning points

When the Paralympic Games began in 1960 in Rome, the technology was rudimentary, as was the case for able-bodied athletes too. Two decades later, the introduction of lightweight materials like aluminum and titanium for wheelchairs marked a turning point, improving speed and manoeuvrability across sports like basketball, rugby and racing.

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By the 1990s, the use of carbon fibre enhanced prosthetics, with South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius being the first to use the ‘Flex-Foot Cheetah’–blades that mimic the spring-like action of the human foot, allowing amputees to run, jump and even sprint.

Since the 2010s, technology has also focused on customization, precision and inclusivity. For example, swimmers with limb differences are using 3D-printed prosthetic limbs tailored to their specific needs.

Blind athletes in goalball use highly sensitive balls embedded with Bluetooth to detect movement, ensuring fair play and competitive integrity.

Exoskeletons, too, are proving a game-changer for athletes with severe impairments. These are powered suits that assist in movement, enabling athletes with paraplegia to compete in new categories. These are being trialled in events like the marathon, expanding the range of sports in which severely impaired athletes can participate.

Clearly, as technology continues to evolve, it promises even more groundbreaking changes that will further empower Paralympians.

On the flip side, though, there is concern that advanced tech may queer the pitch even for able-bodied athletes–imagine a differently-abled person in an electric wheelchair racing with an able-bodied person.

Indeed, Blake Leeper, a US Paralympic sprinter, wanted to compete against able-bodied athletes. He was banned by the World Athletics in 2020 from competing with his carbon fiber running blades on grounds that they gave him an unfair height advantage.

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The ruling, upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), sparked a debate on fairness and the use of advanced prosthetics in sports, highlighting the complexities of defining "natural" height for double amputees and balancing inclusivity with competitive fairness in athletics.

The potential use of neuroprosthetics and other advanced technologies like brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and exoskeletons, too, raises ethical and fairness questions. Unlike conventional prosthetics that rely on mechanical or sensor-based inputs, neuroprosthetics directly interface with the nervous system.

Help of technology

These technologies, for instance, could help a hand amputee control individual finger movements by thought. That could be good news for Paralympians like Devi. The main concern–whether such technologies could give an undue advantage over competitors who do not have access to, or choose not to use them–is common across events for able bodied and differently abled athletes.

Athletes themselves take a measured view of technology.

Sumith Kumar Garg, a para badminton athlete, said that while technology may offer more advantages to para athletes with disability in the hand (SU5 category) for shuttlers, “prosthetics, till date, does not offer any distinct advantage in badminton for the SU5 category, at least”.

"I come under the IPC 'hand' category since I do not have a left arm. There are many workouts in gym that I cannot do nor any affordable prosthetics which can aid in workouts and there are only a very few coaches in India who can train a para athlete.” adds Garg, who has represented India in two World Championships.

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) are in the process of developing more specific guidelines to cover the use of such advanced technologies and ensure fair competition.

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The IPC uses a classification system to group athletes based on the type and extent of their disability. Further, both the IPC and IOC collaborate with scientists, ethicists, and medical professionals to study the impact of new technologies.

Use of AI

Sporting bodies and researchers in Queensland, Australia, are investing over $1.5 million to develop an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered system "that ensures fair and accurate classification for Para athletes worldwide". The system is expected to be ready for the 2032 Games to be hosted by Australia.

Santosh Vikram Singh, senior partner, Fox Mandal, who leads the firm’s IP and sports law practices in southern and western India, said that while the IPC rules state that "equipment that results in sports performance not primarily being generated by the athlete’s own physical prowess but by automated, computer-aided, or robotic devices is prohibited,” there are grey areas that are often leveraged to gain an added advantage.

Suma Shirur, coach of India's ace shooter Avani Lekhara who has already won gold in the 10m category in Paris and is now gunning for the 50m rifle event, told Mint that "there's hardly any extra use of technology here–it's literally just a wheelchair, which is Avani's legs in this case. And it's the same rifle and jacket that Olympic athletes use."

In shooting, she added, the technology has more to do with the rifles, which are upgraded every four years or so.

“What I have really worked on with Avani, is building up the entire system–exactly like how I would work with an (able bodied) Olympic athlete. In terms of the upper body position, everything is on similar lines. The difference comes when I have to think about the lower body, because it's different. In Avani's case, who has a spinal cord injury (paraplegia), there's no sensation in her lower body. That's a challenge for her to produce the kind of scores that you will see an Olympic athlete do, since balance is the key. Also, because of the rod in her back Avani could not do the prone (lying face down) and kneeling positions, especially. Hence, I had to adapt to improvise the technique.”

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