Not wanted at Paralympics, they’re excelling anyway

Pair in legal dispute over whether they could race in Beijing.

Until the moment Cécile Hernandez of France was handed an official racing bib and a time slot Saturday, she still feared that race officials would forbid her to compete.

Only the day before, after months of legal wrangling, she sat in her room in the Olympic Village, listening via videoconference to a court proceeding in Germany in which an opposing team’s national delegation questioned her level of disability.

Her lawyer had assured her that all would be fine, that all she needed to worry about was zooming as fast as possible down the snowboarding course at the Beijing Paralympics.

But with legal jargon still clattering around her mind — along with an image from one of her social media accounts that was used as evidence against her — Hernandez’s anxiety spiked in the form of insomnia, worry and tears.

“I know they didn’t want me here,” she said. “Can you imagine what that is like? I did not sleep for two nights. The stress was so much, and it was making my MS worse.”

Hernandez, who has multiple sclerosis, overcame her stress and lack of sleep to finish atop the standings on the first day of qualification runs for the women’s snowboard cross event Sunday. The second-place finisher was American snowboarder Brenna Huckaby, Hernandez’s fellow plaintiff in a bitter legal dispute with the International Paralympic Committee over whether the two could race in the Beijing Games at all.

That both of them made it into the Games, let alone finished 1-2 on the first day of qualifying, seemed unlikely just weeks ago. But like Hernandez, Huckaby knows the organizers of the Paralympics did not want her here.

“I’m pretty sure they still don’t, and it is a weird feeling,” Huckaby said after her run Sunday. “I don’t feel supported. I feel voiceless, which is really sad, because the mission of the IPC is inclusion and representation.”

A spokesperson for the Paralympic committee referred to a statement it issued last month that said it was “disappointed” at a court ruling that allowed the women to race. He added that the organization was planning to increase opportunities for female athletes in Winter Paralympics, including, for the first time, six medal events for female snowboarders at the Milan-cortina Paralympics in 2026.

Hernandez and Huckaby’s legal appeal against the IPC, which will not be completely resolved for months, goes to the core of classification — a system that para sports use to equitably organize athletes into groups according to their levels of impairment.

The goal is to make each competition as fair as possible, much like categories by age, weight and gender. In para sports, it is a complicated process, far from perfect, and complaints arise among athletes about where they and their opponents are classified. The IPC is in the middle of a three-year study to examine ways to improve the system.

But Hernandez and Huckaby were not challenging their classification. They were fighting for their right to race.

“It has been a very, very hard fight,” Hernandez said.

More than two years ago, the IPC informed Hernandez, a gold medalist at the 2018 Paralympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, that she and Huckaby, a 2018 gold medal winner from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, could not compete at the Beijing Games. No one accused them of doing anything wrong. Their misfortune was to be entered in races that would be canceled for lack of other snowboarders.

Both Hernandez, 47, and Huckaby, 26, are classified as SB-LL1. An SB-LL1 racer has significant impairment in one leg, like an above-theknee amputation or significant combined impairments in two legs. But there were not enough qualified LL1 snowboarders to make the race viable, and the IPC shut it down.

So Huckaby asked instead to be in the men’s LL1 race or in the women’s LL2, both ostensibly more challenging categories for her. An LL2 racer has an impairment in one or both legs, with less activity limitation than an LL1 competitor. In all para sports, classification is determined by doctors observing the athletes.

The IPC declined her request, even though the racers were moving up in class. The IPC is opposed to athletes of one classification moving into events of another. It could affect the integrity of the competition if athletes were allowed to race in whatever classification they chose.

Huckaby and Hernandez hired Christof Wieschemann, a German lawyer, to handle the case because, with the IPC based in Bonn, German courts had jurisdiction.

Wieschemann first won a temporary injunction for Huckaby on Jan. 27, arguing that classification systems of any kind in all sports are designed to “protect the weak against the strong,” not the other way around. Hernandez won her preliminary injunction Feb. 16, and all that was left was a final hearing in the days leading up to the Games.

Wieschemann called his client to give her the good news that she was going to China. Hernandez was watching the film “Titanic” with her 14-year-old daughter at the time, and on that night, there were tears of joy.

Hernandez flew to Beijing at the end of February and spent five days practicing on the slopes. But then, Thursday, her case was back in court for a final scheduled hearing. With just three days until the event, the IPC, joined now by Canadian Paralympic officials, was protesting the ruling.

The Canadians said Hernandez had an advantage based on her level of impairment, and at the proceeding showed a photo of Hernandez from one of her social media accounts to support the argument.

“My disability does not show up in photos of my body,” Hernandez said in an interview. “My legs don’t work. I have impairment in my eyes. My brain won’t allow my body to work. My whole body is disabled.”