Data collected 0900 JST 16-Nov-2025
The Games are underway — but you’d hardly know it from the world’s sports desks.
Today should have been the moment the headlines shifted from warm-up stories to actual competition: goals scored, medals won, shocks, heroics, heartbreak. Instead? Silence. And not the Deaf kind. The media kind.
Yes, the results exist. They’re sitting quietly on the official Tokyo 2025 website. They’re in federation match reports — like the USA Deaf Women smashing Japan 5–0, or the Ukrainian men putting five past the US team. They’re hidden in Japanese corporate updates and athlete sponsor pages. The wrestling brackets are fully up. The schedules are live. The data is there.
But where are the stories?
Where is the mainstream “Day 1 at the Deaflympics”?
Where is the BBC Sport medal table ticker?
Where is the ESPN highlight reel?
Where is even one big newsroom saying “Here’s what happened today”?
This is the pattern we’re exposing: if a Deaf athlete wins, you have to dig through official PDFs and federation pages to find out. The world’s sports media aren’t telling the story. Not yet. Media access information
And that’s exactly why we’re watching.
Exactly why we’re documenting this gap.
Exactly why we’re doing this work.
Because the athletes are competing.
The results are happening.
The moments are real.
The coverage should be too.
Real sport with real results, ignored by real newsrooms.
All the details are here on the official Deaflympics2025 website
Live action via You Tube
Two Big Ears 
Thank you Big Ears for continuing to monitor the global media coverage of Deaflympics. Visibility is important, but real integrity must come from transparency, fair eligibility rules, and strong ethical governance — not only from promotion or ceremony.
As Deaf athletes, we want to trust that Deaflympics represents real Deaf sport, based on equal hearing conditions for all competitors. For many years, athletes from different countries have raised concerns about unclear or insufficient audiological verification, lack of transparent classification results, and no published statistics about eligibility or appeals.
If Deaflympics stands for fairness, then transparency should not be feared — it should be required.
Other international sport systems (Olympics, Paralympics, Special Olympics) have public classification structures, auditing, and accountability. Deaf sport deserves the same level of credibility and respect.
I hope the future of Deaflympics will include:
• publicly verifiable rules and procedures
• independent audiological oversight with objective testing
• transparent statistics and reporting
• athlete rights and appeal processes
• stronger ethics and governance
• respect for real Deaf identity and culture
Deaf athletes train with full heart and sacrifice — we deserve a system that protects fairness, not one that leaves questions unanswered.
Thank you for documenting what others ignore.
It matters.
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Thank you for your comments – we are glad that you are enjoying and appreciating our coverage – who ever you are – would be nice to have your name! All athletes competing at the Deaflympics and ICSD sanctioned events World Championships and Regional championships must meet the stringent classification criteria found on the Deaflympic website. https://www.deaflympics.com/icsd/audiogram-regulations
During the games, there are random audiogram tests as well as doping tests.
At local level, non-qualifying events, the rules are more relaxed in some sports to encourage greater inclusion and integration.
It is up to each National Federation to ensure that its athletes and sports organisations are following the rules correctly, the ICSD and its accredited International Federations, will do all they can to observe scrutiny when it comes to classification.
We have seen the ICSD live through a decade or more of instability and uncertainty but now we are observing this and speaking to the people involved and there is a sense that things are moving in the right direction with more focus on the six areas that concern you.
We are working hard to make sure that we give a balanced view of the governance and management of international Deaf sport and we will highlight issues of concern when there is evidence to back that up.
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Thank you for your reply.
However, referring only to the written regulations does not answer the core problem raised by many Deaf athletes internationally:
there is a huge difference between “having rules” and “proving that rules are enforced, verified, audited, and impossible to bypass.”
If Deaflympics is a serious and credible international event, then transparency must go beyond sharing a PDF link.
To address long-standing concerns, I will ask direct and essential questions that require clear answers, not general statements:
• tested, retested, rejected, appealed, or disqualified based on audiology?
• including numbers per country, not individual names
Rules without audited results do not prove fairness — they only prove that the organisation expects trust without evidence.
A truly confident and ethical sport system is not afraid of public transparency, independent medical oversight, and data publication.
Until ICSD can provide measurable evidence, not descriptive assurances, the question remains valid and unresolved:
Is Deaf sport currently protected by strict medical verification, or only by trust-based statements?
Deaf athletes sacrifice years of training.
We are not asking for privileges — only for a fair playing field that cannot be manipulated.
Transparency is not hostility.
Lack of transparency is.
Monika
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Thank you, Monika — these questions matter to many people in Deaf sport.
To clarify the current ICSD system:
Eligibility for Deaf sport is based on one rule — a hearing level of 55dB or greater in the better ear.
This applies regardless of how the deafness occurred (from birth, later in life, or due to medical intervention such as a cochlear implant).
Under ICSD regulations, hearing aids and cochlear implants cannot be worn during competition.
These are the global standards that all national federations follow.
Two Big Ears cannot publish ICSD’s internal data or speak on their behalf, but we recognise that many athletes would welcome clearer public information about how these systems are applied. We will continue to support constructive dialogue and encourage greater transparency from the bodies responsible.
Thank you for contributing to this important conversation.
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Thank you for your reply.
However, referring only to the written regulations does not answer the core problem raised by many Deaf athletes internationally:
there is a huge difference between “having rules” and “proving that rules are enforced, verified, audited, and impossible to bypass.”
If Deaflympics is a serious and credible international event, then transparency must go beyond sharing a PDF link.
To address long-standing concerns, I will ask direct and essential questions that require clear answers, not general statements:
• tested, retested, rejected, appealed, or disqualified based on audiology?
• including numbers per country, not individual names
Rules without audited results do not prove fairness — they only prove that the organisation expects trust without evidence.
A truly confident and ethical sport system is not afraid of public transparency, independent medical oversight, and data publication.
Until ICSD can provide measurable evidence, not descriptive assurances, the question remains valid and unresolved:
Is Deaf sport currently protected by strict medical verification, or only by trust-based statements?
Deaf athletes sacrifice years of training.
We are not asking for privileges — only for a fair playing field that cannot be manipulated.
Transparency is not hostility.
Lack of transparency is.
Monika
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Thank you for your reply and for clarifying the basic ICSD eligibility rule.
However, the fact that Deaf sport is defined only by “55 dB in the better ear” is exactly the core problem many Deaf athletes are concerned about, because hearing loss level alone does not equalise sensory development, language acquisition, reaction processing, cognitive auditory memory, or communication access.
A profoundly Deaf person from birth, who never had functional auditory input, does not have the same neurological or competitive conditions as someone who:
• became deaf later in life,
• acquired spoken-language hearing during childhood,
• used hearing aids for years,
• or has cochlear implant experience, even if removed for competition.
These are not emotional arguments — they are medically documented neurological differences.
Paralympics recognises functional differences, not only measured impairment.
Deaf sport currently does not.
So my follow-up question is very direct:
• Deaf from birth
• Early-deafened
• Late-deafened
• Hearing-trained with devices
• CI users (with past auditory brain stimulation)
This is not about who is allowed to compete — it is about whether competition conditions are equal, not just equipment rules.
Removing a hearing device on competition day does not erase years of auditory-based neurological training advantage.
Many athletes are not asking for exclusion — only for fair classification, exactly like Paralympics does.
Transparency is the foundation of trust — not silence, not assumptions.
Thank you for continuing this discussion.
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