Paralympics: Crackdown on cheats who ‘boost’ blood pressure

Rio de Janeiro: The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) is to crack down on cheating in Rio as it introduces new tests to prevent ‘boosting,’ a banned performance-enhancing practice, which seeks to give Paralympic competitors an edge but puts them at risk from strokes or even cardiac arrest.

‘Boosting’ increases the blood pressure and heart rate in para-athletes suffering from spinal cord injuries, with IPC research in Canada showing it can increase performance by up to 25 per cent. It involves para-athletes using often extreme ways to shock the body into producing an effect similar to adrenalin, including blocking catheters to make the bladder feel full.

Other methods can involve competitors squeezing their own testicles, putting pins under them, breaking bones and even stimulating muscles with electric shocks. For the first time, the IPC will ban from competing any para-athlete found to have a systolic blood pressure of 160 mmHg just before their event is to begin, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

That is a reduction from the previous limit of 180 mmHg, and reflects growing fears that the dangerous practice is on the rise. The Paralympic Games opened on Wednesday under a cloud. Ticket sales have been slow. Financial troubles have meant some stadiums have been ditched for the Games, while transport and security levels have been reduced from the Olympics last month.

And the Games will not feature a Russian athlete after the nation was banned for running a state-sponsored doping regime. Boosting — or the deliberate induction of a dangerous condition common to quadriplegics called ‘autonomic dysreflexia’ — mimics the effect that occurs naturally in able-bodied athletes whose blood pressure and heart rates increase naturally as they engage in hard physical activity.

The IPC considers boosting by para-athletes a method of cheating, the equivalent of able-bodied athletes using designer steroids to enhance performance in the Olympics. Yet, cheating in Paralympic sport is a sign that athletes are prepared to go to huge lengths to get on the podium. Some countries, such as Ukraine, offer huge financial compensation for medallists. One expert has previously suggested that a third of competitors with spinal injuries at the Paralympics may be harming themselves to boost performance.

Doctors at the Games will be looking out for athletes looking uncomfortable or sweating profusely — and will have the right to pull an athlete out of an event. A leading medical official from the IPC said: “It is not endemic, but we do suspect that these very few athletes are ‘boosting’. We want to educate and discourage the practice. If athletes are found to have a systolic blood pressure above 160, they will be given 10 minutes to lower it, and if they can’t, they will be withdrawn.”

An IPC doctor said: “We are protecting the health of the athlete, so it is banned to compete in a reflexic state. The marker for this is blood pressure. The level set prior to these Games, in the early 2000s, was systolic blood pressure of 180. The IPC needed data to set the level. We have that now, and the new threshold must be adhered to.”

Over the last eight years, while testing levels, the IPC has found that 2.5 per cent of those tested have abnormally high systolic blood pressure before an event — a sign that some athletes are cheating. The IPC’s method of checking for boosting through testing systolic blood pressure — when the heart contracts at its most forcefully — has been lowered after extensive research and under the recommendation of the American College of Sports Medicine, in Indianapolis.

Boosting could be used by athletes in track events, hand-cycling, and wheelchair rugby — but it can occur naturally, so it is a delicate and controversial issue. Brad Zdanivsky, a Canadian quadriplegic, told the BBC before London 2012: “I would give my leg a couple of good electric shocks. That would make my blood pressure jump and I could do more weights and cycle harder. You get a blood pressure spike that could cause a stroke. It can stop your heart, but the results are hard to deny.”

- The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2016