UPDATE: Interview with Dr. Jonna Belanger on Paralympic Classification

Burn It All Down

Sports

4.5 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 25 August 2021

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode is a re-air of a 2018 interview (from Ep. 44) with an update regarding the 2020/21 Tokyo Paralympic Games. Dr. Amira Rose Davis talks with Dr. Jonna Belanger, A U.S. Paralympics Track & Field Classifier and Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Penn State University. They discuss how the Paralympic classification system determines an athlete's eligibility to compete in a specific sport based on their ability, impairment and/or disability. Listen to the end for Dr. Belanger's update regarding the 2020/21 Tokyo Paralympic Games. This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network. For show notes, transcripts, and more info about BIAD, check out our website: www.burnitalldownpod.com To help support the Burn It All Down podcast, please consider becoming a patron: www.patreon.com/burnitalldown For BIAD merchandise: https://www.bonfire.com/store/burn-it-all-down/ Find us on Twitter: twitter.com/BurnItDownPod; Facebook: www.facebook.com/BurnItAllDownPod/; and Instagram: www.instagram.com/burnitalldownpod/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	And I'll suck you up and I spit you out and I'll play with your babies to the screaming shout. Oh, yeah.
0:09.5	Hey, Flamethrowers, Amira here. And we are continuing our Paralympic Week here on Burn It All Down.
0:15.2	Today we are re-airing a conversation I had with my Penn State colleague, Dr. Johna Blandger,
0:20.1	who researches disability
0:22.1	in sports, particularly sporting opportunities for youth with disabilities. She's also a National
0:27.0	Paralympic Athletics Classifier. Back in 2018, episode 44, we chatted in advance of the
0:34.3	parawinter games. So I wanted to call her up, get a little bit of updates for the summer games, but so much of that
0:41.1	interview is still very relevant to our coverage now.
0:44.4	So check it out.
0:46.3	So the Paralympics is upon us, and I am delighted to be here today with Dr. Jonna Belanger,
0:52.3	my colleague here at Penn State, and she's over in the Department
0:55.1	of Kinesiology, where she works on adapted physical activity and disability sports awareness.
1:00.7	And she is also a classifier for USA Track and Field Paralympics.
1:05.2	I'm so glad to have you here.
1:07.0	Thank you.
1:07.8	So Paralympics is an event that we feel here at Brent Aldan doesn't get as much coverage as it should, and also that we feel we don't know enough about. So when I heard you were a classifier for USA Track and Field Paralympics, I was like, I have to talk to her. So what does that mean? Can you tell us what classification is?
1:32.7	Sure. So classification is actually like our backbone to the Paralympics.
1:40.5	It provides us with the structure. The closest thing to think of is like if we look at traditional sports, you have the age and gender.
1:45.5	Well, we just add a second layer, or third layer, actually, of classification on there,
1:51.9	and it allows the sport to be as fair and equitable as possible. So our goal with classification is to group people together based on function to find the most elite highest functioning athlete within
1:58.1	that group. An example would be like taking all athletes who have a
2:02.9	below knee amputation and they run against each other. So they would be classed together. Every sport
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Burn It All Down, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Burn It All Down and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.