New Zealander Rebecca Foulsham’s key role at the Paralympics

Rebecca Foulsham never aspired to be a Paralympic classifier, but she is now in charge of an international team that plays a vital role in disability sport.

Foulsham entered the Paralympic circuit in the mid-1990s through her husband, Gavin Foulsham, who represented New Zealand at two Paralympic Games.

“The first time I met Gavin he was a Paralympian competing in wheelchair events so I would follow him to events and I got chatting to some of the staff from the New Zealand Paralympics,” Fulsham said.

“They found out I was a physical therapist and asked if I would be interested in helping them with their athletic classifications for track and field…and that’s how it all started.”

Folsham’s first Paralympic experience was actually as the New Zealand team doctor for the 2000 Sydney Paralympics.

“Since then I have competed in a few more events, the last one being in Rio. I have also competed in several Para Athletics World Championships since the late 1990s. The most recent was this year in Kobe, Japan, so I have been privileged to watch some really great competitions.”

Two years ago, Foulsham was appointed director of classification for the World Para Athletics Championships. She will not be travelling to the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games starting this week, but much of a classifier’s work is done before the events begin.

Para-sport classifications define who is eligible to compete and group eligible athletes with disabilities into different sport categories depending on how much their disability affects their ability to play a particular sport.

“We have to make sure they are at the right level – it’s better for the sport and fairer to all athletes within those levels of the sport.”

Folsham said the classification process has changed significantly since she first became involved 30 years ago.

“Athletics was one of the first sports to be included in Para-Sports, so it has had more time to develop its classification system.

“The previous system was more diagnosis-based, so if you had a certain health condition you were put in one category, whereas now the system really looks at the impact of an athlete’s injury on their sport, rather than just what your diagnosis is.

“We are constantly reviewing our rules and working to improve our work to make them easier to apply and easier for everyone to understand.”

Classifiers follow a prescribed procedure that includes reviewing medical documentation, conducting fitness assessments and observing athletes in competition.

While her role is voluntary, Folsham is responsible for the classified teams, education and the classified direction of the sport.

Foulsham, who lives in Hawke’s Bay, has worked with hundreds of Paralympic athletes over the years, each with their own unique circumstances.

Telling someone they’ve been put into an unexpected category can be one of the most challenging aspects of the job.

“Most of the time things go well, but because it can affect athletes so much, especially international athletes, it can be difficult if things don’t go the way they expected.

“We take this very seriously and these decisions need to be well communicated in a way that everyone can understand.

“Every sport has avenues that can be taken if people are unhappy with the classification, so we have to make sure people fully understand why things happened and what happens next.”

Over the years, Folsham has worked with hundreds of inspiring Paralympic athletes, including, of course, her husband.

“He represented New Zealand in a number of sports from para rowing to para athletics and for him it was about competitive achievement. “From a disabled person’s perspective he was just doing his thing, working, raising a family and if people found that inspiring then that was fine with him.”

One of the first athletes Folsham worked with was Peter Martin, who competed in four Paralympic Games between 1996 and 2012, winning four gold medals for New Zealand.

Martin, who was left a quadriplegic after sustaining a spinal injury in a farm bike accident, once competed in the seated throwing event.

He won gold medals in the shot put at three consecutive Paralympic Games in 1996, 2000 and 2004, and in the javelin in 2004.

“I learned a lot from him because he was one of the first quadriplegic athletes I came into contact with and he really broke all the stereotypes about what quadriplegics were capable of, and as a young physiotherapist I carried that ethos with me both in my clinical work and throughout my para-sport experience.

“He was also the first person I went to international classification with, which definitely inspired me to become an international classifier. I was very interested in the process and it was not easy for him.

“He taught me a lot about seated throwing. I learned a lot from a lot of athletes about their events, which are very different from the athletics that able-bodied people participate in.”

Foulsham said she was delighted to be working with Paralympic athletes whose journeys began in the New Zealand secondary school sport system.

“There are a lot of sports that stand out because we had a system that integrated athletics very early on, which is a very positive thing for para sport.

“So it’s really cool to see people like Anna Grimaldi and Will Steadman, who started out as kids competing in school, and now are able to quietly support them on the track and field, in the big races.”

The Paralympics are currently the third-largest sporting event in the world in terms of ticket sales, after the Olympics and the World Cup.

Are Paralympic athletes now more at risk than they might otherwise be eligible for High Performance Sport New Zealand funding, let alone sponsorship opportunities?

“That’s not to say that when I first got involved in the 90s and early 2000s, there were athletes who weren’t sponsored athletes, they were. But it’s become a requirement, you need to really commit or be close to it, and in some sports it’s more than others.

“There has been a change, and with it come higher expectations and greater potential rewards. In some countries, if you do well on the world stage, you can expect significant financial gains.

“These drivers do mean the sport has become more professional. We are more focused on the rules and procedures and it has become more difficult to get selected for the higher levels of competition.”

The 2024 Paris Paralympic Games opens on Thursday and will see up to 4,400 athletes from around the world compete.

New Zealand will send 25 disabled athletes to compete in eight different sports.