By Gary Anderson

April 26 - The IPC has ruled that swimmer Hayley Morris is ineligible to compete on the international stage ©Getty Images Australian swimmer Hayley Morris has had her hopes of competing at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games dashed after the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) ruled she is ineligible to compete in international events.

Morris travelled to Brazil with the Australian team for an international meeting in São Paolo this weekend and was due to compete in the women's SB9 100 metres breaststroke event.

But the 15-year-old was assessed by IPC classifiers who deemed her disability was not severe enough, despite her getting clearance from Swimming Australia and the Australian Paralympic Committee (APC).

Morris had competed in the recent Australian Swimming Championships in Brisbane, winning medals in the 50m and 100m breaststroke events.

Morris, who is a twin, has a twisted femur from a birth defect resulting in her hips being at the wrong angle and has a mild form of spina bifida.

She is unable to turn her feet into the correct angle for a legal breaststroke kick, resulting in her being disqualified from able-bodied races, however she can compete in the other three strokes; freestyle, backstroke and butterfly.

The swimmer's level of disability has been rated as nine which is the mildest form of physical impairment an athlete can have in a disabled division.

She is entitled to have the decision by the IPC reviewed by a separate panel and APC chief executive Jason Hellwig has promised to ensure the review is carried out thoroughly to give Morris the best chance of competing in her strongest event on the international stage.

"The second review needs to be done by a different panel to the first review, so we'll run our eye over that and do what is necessary to make sure the right thing happens,'' he said.

''The first thing is to make sure we have a system in Australia where 99 times out of 100 we get athletes in the right classes at a domestic level and that applies internationally.

''There will always be those athletes who are right on the cusp where you need that international panel to make that final determination.

''If there is any anxiety about that at all, the sooner you can get that done the better.

''We've tried to move that process as far away from a Paralympic Games as possible and as early in an athlete's career as possible.''

If the second review upholds the IPC's original decision then Morris has no other recourse to take and will have to accept the ruling.

Despite the swimmer getting clearance from the APC, Hellwig claimed the standard of classifiers in Australia has vastly improved in recent years but more needs to be done to ensure that the APC's classifiers are in sync with those of the IPC.

"We've really tried to get Australians up to an international standard,'' added Hellwig.

"What we don't have in Australia is enough international classifiers to give us a round table of people who can help us with athletes who are right on the margins.

"The reality of Paralympic sport is that one of its defining and unique characteristics is classification and there will always be really difficult classification situations to test the system.''

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