The International Pole and Aerial Sports Federation was delighted to announce the introduction of a Para Pole category at the 2017 World Pole Sports Championships in the Netherlands.

Challenging the interests of para-sport is the threat of one sided and predictable competition, in which the least impaired athlete always wins. To prevent this, para-athletes are placed in categories for competition based on their impairment, these are called sport classes. The IPC classification system determines which athletes are eligible to compete in a sport and how athletes are grouped together for competition. This, to a certain extent, is similar to grouping athletes by age, gender or weight.

In para-sport, athletes are grouped by the degree of activity limitation resulting from the impairment. Different sports require athletes to perform different activities. As sports require different activities, the impact of the impairment on each sport also differs (sourced from Classification Model Rules for Para Sports, January 2017- IPC International Paralympics Comité, available at www.paralympic.org/classification). Therefore, for classification to minimise the impact of impairment on pole sport performance, classification is now pole sport specific.