In 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttmann organized a sports competition involving World War II veterans with a spinal cord injury in Stoke Mandeville, England. Four years later, competitors from the Netherlands joined the games and an international movement was born.

Olympic style games for athletes with a disability were organized for the first time in Rome in 1960, now called Paralympics. In Toronto in 1976, other disability groups were added and the idea of merging together different disability groups for international sport competitions was born. In the same year, the first Paralympic Winter Games took place in Sweden.

Today, the Paralympics are elite sport events for athletes from six different disability groups. They emphasize, however, the participants’ athletic achievements rather than their disability. The movement has grown dramatically since its first days. The number of athletes participating in Summer Paralympic Games has increased from 400 athletes in Rome in 1960 to 3843 in Sydney in 2000. In Sydney, a record number of 122 countries, or 123 delegations including independent athletes from East Timor, participated at the Paralympics, making this the largest Games in Paralympic history.

The Paralympic Games have always been held in the same year as the Olympic Games. Since the Seoul 1988 Paralympic Games and the Albertville 1992 Winter Paralympic Games they have also taken place at the same venues as the Olympics. On 19 June 2001, an agreement was signed between IOC and IPC securing this practice for the future. From the 2012 bid process onwards, the host city chosen to host the Olympic Games will be obliged to also host the Paralympics.

After the Paralympic Games in Athens , Greece, the Italian city of Torino will host the 2006 Paralympic Winter Games, and the Summer Paralympics 2008 will be in Beijing, China. Vancouver will host the Winter Paralympics in 2010.

Tag: Paralympic Games