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The cheats who won gold and left a devastating legacy for learning disability sport

The cheats who won gold and left a devastating legacy for learning disability sport.

British swimmer Dan Pepper says he was destroyed by the ban on intellectual impairment sports at the Paralympics – it ruined his career. The ban was imposed after Spain won basketball gold at the Sydney 2000 Paralympics with a squad of 12 in which - it later emerged - only two players were genuinely disabled. In The Fake Paralympians, Dan sets out to find the truth about what happened and its devastating impact on learning disability sport.

Image credit: EPA

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The Fake Paralympians: 3. Lost

31/08/2021 GMT

3. Lost

BBC World Service - The Fake Paralympians, 3. Lost

The truth is out, the medals handed back. Now the questions. How? And why?

The cheating is now out in the open and the players - including genuinely-disabled captain Ray - have to hand back their gold medals. But how and when did the cheating start? An ex-coach of the team, who was in charge until just two years before the scandal, says he began to suspect something was wrong way before Sydney 2000.

Plus Dan tries to find an answer to one of the biggest questions of all - why did the cheats do it?

Presenter: Dan Pepper
Series producer: Simon Maybin

(Photo credit: EPA)

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