On March 7, Team USA’s Brenna Huckaby earned bronze in the women’s Paralympics snowboard cross final, clinching a medal at a Games in which, as of just over a month ago, she wasn’t even eligible to compete.
The road to the podium at the 2022 Beijing Games was not a smooth one for Huckaby. In Beijing, Huckaby nearly faced elimination in the semi-finals, after riding in last place for much of the race before overtaking two other riders in the last straightaway. Then in the finals, she collided with Dutch rider Lisa Bunschoten, but was able to hold on to finish third. France’s Cecile Hernandez won gold, while Canada’s Lisa DeJong won silver.
But up until January, Huckaby—who won two golds in PyeongChang in 2018—didn’t even know whether she’d be able to compete at the 2022 Winter Games. Hernandez faced the same uncertainties as well.
That’s because their classification, SB-LL1, was taken off the Paralympic program after the 2018 Games because there weren’t enough athletes in it to make the race viable, according to The New York Times. In the Paralympics, athletes compete in classifications stratified by their levels of impairment. According to World Para Snowboard, the SB-LL1 classification includes athletes with significant impairments in one leg, such as an above-the-knee amputation, or significant combined impairments in both legs. (Huckaby’s right leg was amputated above the knee in 2010 after a bone cancer diagnosis.)
In September 2021, Huckaby asked the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) to compete in either the men’s LL1 race or in the women’s LL2, a category of lower limb impairment with less limitation than LL1, according to the IPC. Both of these races would be considered more difficult than the one she competed in at the 2018 Games—it’s a practice known as “competing up,” according to ESPN, and it’s something Huckaby has done successfully in other competitions throughout her career.
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But the IPC declined her request.
“I have long been a proud advocate for the Paralympic Movement, which is supposed to be the leader of diversity & inclusion,” Huckaby wrote on her Instagram. “Yet when it comes to its flagship event, the Paralympics, my disability is the reason I’m excluded.”
So Huckaby and Hernandez—who also competed in the 2018 Games in the SB-LL1 classification—hired a lawyer to file an injunction in German court (which has jurisdiction based on the IPC’s location) in November 2021, arguing that the classification systems are designed to “protect the weak against the strong,” not the other way around, according to The New York Times.
Huckaby won a temporary injunction to compete in January, and Hernandez followed suit in February.
“I am grateful that the court recognized the merits of my case and the broader impact of prioritizing inclusion,” Huckaby told ESPN through her agent after the ruling. “While this was a big win, there is always more work to be done, and I hope that this reminds adaptive athletes and the disabled community more broadly to never give up on our fight for inclusion.”
Source: https://www.self.com
