You don't need to be to play a number of wheelchair sports.

To be clear I think there's a sharp difference between people who qualify through para sport criteria because they have a named disability and can't play the running game and thus have to use a wheelchair to play sport alongside disabled people who have to use one all the time, and abled people who don't have any impairment at all.

I used to be disability and inclusion director of a rugby league governing body, and it did bother me that in the quest for 'performance' what was happening was serving military personnel who were NOT disabled were being recruited into national teams to play as abled members of the team.

As you say, this pushed out disabled players who could not compete with able bodied military personnel. I also (and I say this as an ex reservist whose close friend was permanently disabled by an IED in Iraq) have views about military people driving civilians out of para sport *in general*. Invictus exists for a very good reason.

Going back to the original point, the idea behind allowing non-disabled people to play wheelchair sports was an inclusion one - that this would provude an opportunity for disabled and abled people to play together and at its best it does work like that. But it is increasingly being taken advantage of unfortunately.

And as for that bloke, what a weirdo.