ATHENS, Sept 28 (AFP) - Paralympics head Phil Craven hailed the Athens Games as a success as competition ended Tuesday, but foresaw a major review of the classification system for disabilities, suggesting it may be too complicated.
"I am very upbeat about the Games," International Paralympics Committee (IPC) president Craven told a press conference, just before the closing ceremony.
He praised the Greek organizing committee and said Athens had provided "without doubt the best group of sporting facilities in the world."
The Paralympics is the premier sporting event for elite disabled athletes, and covers 19 sports including swimming, athletics and wheelchair basketball.
In the Athens Games, nearly 4,000 athletes from 136 countries competed over 12 days.
But Craven pledged a "there will be a major review" of the Paralympics complicated classification system, especially in athletics, in which athletes are categorized according to their level of disability.
"We can't have things that are too complicated," Craven said.
Due to a lack of competitors within certain disability groups, athletes with different classifications often competed in the same event.
But that led to some anamolies when athletes set world records within their category but wound up without a medal, which they said was frustrating for them and difficult for spectators to understand.
The event was to wind up later Tuesday with a closing ceremony which has been revised following a bus accident Monday in which seven Greek school children were killed on their way to the Games.
Committee organizers also said they had wider coverage than usual of the Games, with more than 3,000 journalists and 50 broadcasters travelling to Athens.
And 850,000 tickets were sold, more than twice the number forecast, IPC spokeswoman Miriam Wilkens said.
Several broadcasters -- including the BBC in Britain and CCTV in China -- offered daily live coverage as well as highlights.
But the most notable exception was the United States, where NBC paid 793 million dollars for able-bodies Olympics broadcast rights, but the rights to the Paralympics remained unsold.
"The Paralympic movement needs broadcast coverage in the United States," said Craven, noting the Athens Games lost money, without providing details.
Craven also said that an extraordinary assembly would meet in Cairo in November to decide whether events for athletes with intellectual disabilities would be included along with five other types of disability: cerebral palsy, amputee, sight-impairment, spinal injuries and a catch-all group called "Les Autres," or "the others".
Sports for the intellectually disabled were relegated to exhibition status after it was discovered that the Spanish gold medalists in men's basketball at the Sydney Games had faked their disabilities.