What they don’t tell you about disabled ski racing…

James Luetchford is a severely sight impaired para alpine ski racer, and represents Great Britain internationally. He’s guided by his wife, Alice who skies in front of him and guides him down slalom and Giant Slalom race courses.

James and Alice ski race training Giant Slalom in Kaunertal, Austria - 2023

… is how traumatising the process of classification can be.

Every person needs to be ‘classified’ as being eligible to take part in para alpine ski races and are categorised on their level of disability. Those athletes that are more disabled have more time taken off their race runs.

James has now gone through 6 classifications for the same degenerative eye condition. He’s been given every type of category except complete blindness and is racing this season as a B3; the least disabled category for visual impairment.

What isn’t talked about as much is the emotional toll the classification process takes on the athletes and their families and friends.

We were stressed before James was classified initially in 2015, but the experience of being mistakenly declassified in 2019 (operator error on the machine) was extremely traumatic. I’ve written about it here and here already.

James is reviewed every 1-2 years depending on the classifier, and was classified for the 6th time yesterday.

The latest classification

So how did his previous experiences of classification affect his latest one?

Well months before classification this year we began to get nervous. He needed to do multiple eye tests and to send them through to the International Paralympic Committee for them to register him at the classification.

The dread began to grow the month before, and a fortnight before classification we were both feeling anxious and getting irritable with each other. The day before, we were both feeling horribly sick; I (Alice) lost my appetite; neither of us could concentrate on anything; it was all we were thinking about.

Why? Because without being classified, we are unable to race. And that has already been taken away from us for 15 months when James was mistakenly declassified in 2019. We were worried that this time the process wouldn’t be followed as it should be, that the classifiers would break the rules and question the diagnosis completely (despite James having genetic testing for his diagnosis), that they classifiers would be rude and dismissive - and completely oblivious to the fact that this is our skiing career and our passion in life. Why was I worried? Because this has all happened to us before.

In the end, James was tested for 3 hours (yes THREE HOURS) yesterday afternoon and evening by two classifiers. Once they realised how anxious James was, they were sensitive and supportive and went to lengths to try and ensure the testing environment was quiet, not distracting and that the machines were actually working as they should have. That part of the classification was the nicest we’ve experienced so far, and the most humane too.

There’s a big shake-up in Visually Impaired ski racing coming next year when visual acuity (reading the letters) is prioritised over visual field (how wide you can see), meaning James can only ever be classified in the least disabled option. But that’s something for another day (or season).

So how are we feeling now?

Exhausted. Pleased that James has a classification (B3) and is able to race his first race of the season tomorrow. Ecstatic that we do not need to go through this horrific process again until 2026.

It’s going to take a while for the adrenaline and cortisol to reduce in our systems and for us to process it all. But the main - and most important - thing is that we can race.

And tomorrow we’re going to race our hearts out!