Managing dis/ability diversity in competition: Participation dynamics in a single-class wheelchair team sport

The management of athletes’ bodily and ability differences is a constant concern in the world of sport. The primary response to managing this issue has been the introduction of sports categories, often based on differences in biological characteristics such as sex, age, and weight. The world of parasports offers categorical innovations that go beyond this biomedical reading of bodies. In powerchair hockey—a sport developed by and for people living with neurodegenerative diseases, and the case study for this article—women and men, children and adults, as well as individuals with different types and degrees of impairment, play within a single category. Drawing on a multisited ethnography of this parasport, this study aims to understand how dis/ability diversity can be managed in single-category competitions. It also reveals how this management shapes athletes’ participation dynamics. Despite some persistent ableist inequalities, the powerchair hockey classification system allows players to adapt their style of play and maintain their participation as their physical impairments worsen and their physical capacity declines, without being (too) devalued within the team.