Who Is Competing at the Elite Level? Exploring Impairment, Gender, and Nationality of International Blind and Partially Sighted Footballers

Classification in para sports aims to create equitable competition. Footballers with vision impairments are allocated to one of three classes (B1, B2, or B3). This work aimed to understand the effectiveness and inclusivity of the current classification system. Visual acuity (VA) and/or visual field of male and female international footballers was extracted anonymously via the International Blind Sports Federation classification database. The analysis included 562 individuals. Footballers were predominantly male (88.26%); 11.74% were female. Only VA was used to classify 99.11% of footballers, and only 4.50% had visual field included in their classification. VA was nonnormally distributed for all three classes. Only 2.84% of footballers had a VA between 2.10 and 2.60 logMAR, suggesting that VAs in this range and/or visual-field impairment may disproportionately impact performance compared with other footballers within their classes. The current classification system does not appear to be inclusive or create equitable competition.