'Blind' judoka who won gold at 2020 Paralympics is banned for life after revelation that she sees perfectly

Judo athlete, Shahana Hajiyeva, who won gold at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games by pretending to be blind, is making headlines Monday after it was revealed that she "sees perfectly."

The Azerbaijani athlete has been banned for life from all international competition after a medical re-evaluation confirmed she does not meet the required visual impairment criteria for her category.

Hajiyeva, 25, triumphed in the 48kg event in Japan and secured gold in the 48kg J2 category at the 2023 European Para Judo Championships.

Despite not participating in the 2024 Paris Olympics, she was scheduled to compete in Astana, Kazakhstan, at the World Parajudo Championships. As revealed by Prosport.az, she failed a medical classification test for judoists with low vision prior to the Kazakhstan competition and that's when the scandal broke.

The test concluded that she had no visual restriction, earning her a permanent ban from her original category.

Shahana Hajiyeva: one of the best athletes in her discipline

The young woman became a leading figure in Paralympic judo after her gold in Tokyo and her participation in the Paris Games. Her performance positioned her as one of the best athletes in her discipline, in a category reserved exclusively for severely visually impaired people.

The recent scandal caused Hajiyeva to be banned for life from the Paralympic circuit, as she failed to meet the new requirements established under the J1 and J2 classification, which replace the former B1, B2 and B3.

It was further revealed in those tests that Elnara Nizamli, who passed the medical classification for completely blind athletes (J1), also has vision.

Is an update in the Paralympic classification system to blame?

Several voices in the sport accuse the athlete of faking blindness, but so far there is no conclusive evidence that she engaged in deliberate fraud.

However, the controversy revolves around an update in the Paralympic classification system, which reduced the number of categories and excluded some eye conditions that were previously allowed.

There is doubt whether Hajiyeva has had an improvement in her vision, or whether her previous participations in international competitions are due to an error in the previous evaluation, and now there has been a tightening of the criteria.

So far it has not been reported whether the athlete will officially lose the medals obtained in previous competitions.

A similar case in Spain

Something similar happened in Spanish sport some years ago. The basketball team of the Real Spanish Federation of Sports for the Intellectually Disabled presented a luxury selection in the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games, which ended in what many consider "the blackest stain in the history of Spanish sport."

Spain won the gold, but days later it was shown that all but two of the Spanish players had no intellectual disability. The investigation went to court.