Paralympic Games
The Paralympic Games or Paralympics is a periodic series of international multisport events involving athletes with a range of disabilities. There are Winter and Summer Paralympic Games, which since the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, have been held shortly after the corresponding Olympic Games. All Paralympic Games are governed by the International Paralympic Committee.
The Paralympics began as a small gathering of British World War II veterans in 1948. The 1960 Games in Rome drew 400 athletes with disabilities from 23 countries, as proposed by doctor Antonio Maglio. Currently it is one of the largest international sporting events: the 2020 Summer Paralympics featuring 4,520 athletes from 163 National Paralympic Committees.
The Paralympic Games are organized in parallel with and in a similar way to the Olympic Games. The IOC-recognized Special Olympics World Games include athletes with intellectual disabilities, and the Deaflympics held since 1924 are exclusive for deaf athletes.
Given the wide variety of disabilities of Para athletes, there are several categories in which they compete. The allowable disabilities are divided into ten eligible impairment types: impaired muscle power, impaired passive range of movement, limb deficiency, leg length difference, short stature, hypertonia, ataxia, athetosis, vision impairment and intellectual impairment. These categories are further divided into various subcategories.
Forerunners
Athletes with disabilities at the Olympic Games
Athletes with disabilities did compete at the Olympic Games prior to the advent of the Paralympics. The first athlete to do so was German-American gymnast George Eyser in 1904, who had one artificial leg. Olivér Halassy, a Hungarian amputee water polo player, competed in three successive Olympic Games, beginning in 1928. Hungarian Károly Takács competed in shooting events in both the 1948 and 1952 Summer Olympics. He was a right-arm amputee and could shoot left-handed. Another athlete with a disability who appeared in the Olympics prior to the Paralympic Games was Lis Hartel, a Danish equestrian athlete who had contracted polio in 1943 and won a silver medal in the dressage event in the 1952 Summer Olympics.Stoke Mandeville Games
The first organized athletic event for athletes with disabilities that coincided with the Olympic Games took place on the day of the opening of the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. The German-Jewish doctor Ludwig Guttmann, of Stoke Mandeville Hospital, who had fled Nazi Germany with the help of the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics in 1939, hosted a sports competition for British World War II veteran patients with spinal cord injuries. The first games were called the 1948 International Wheelchair Games, and were intended to coincide with the 1948 Olympics. Guttman's aim was to create an elite sports competition for people with disabilities that would be equivalent to the Olympic Games. The games were held at the same location each year, and in 1952 Dutch and Israeli veterans took part alongside the British, making it the first international competition of its own kind. In 1960, the 9th annual games took place outside of the UK for the first time in Rome, to coincide with the 1960 Summer Olympics which were also being held in Rome. These were to be later designated the 1st Paralympic Games.These early competitions have been described as the precursors of the Paralympic Games, and Stoke Mandeville holds a similar place in the history of the Paralympic movement as Greece holds in the Olympic Games; since 2012, the Paralympic flame has incorporated a "heritage flame" lit at Stoke Mandeville, although it was combined with flames lit in the host country for the formal start of the torch relay. Beginning in 2024, future Paralympic torch relays will officially begin in Stoke Mandeville, as an equivalent to the Olympic flame being created in Olympia.
Milestones
There have been several milestones in the Paralympic movement. The first official Paralympic Games, coincident with the ninth Stoke Mandeville Games but no longer open solely to war veterans, was held in Rome in 1960. They were the brainchild of Antonio Maglio, a friend and follower of Guttmann and were financed almost entirely by Maglio's employer, the Workers National Accident Insurance Fund of Italy, then led by Renato Morelli, who was also Chairman of the International Social Security Association. Four hundred athletes from 23 countries competed at the 1960 Games. Since 1960, the Paralympic Games have taken place in the same year as the Olympic Games. The Games were initially open only to athletes in wheelchairs; at the 1976 Summer Games, athletes with different disabilities were included for the first time at a Summer Paralympics. With the inclusion of more disability classifications the 1976 Summer Games expanded to 1,600 athletes from 40 countries.The 1988 Summer Paralympics in Seoul was another milestone for the Paralympic movement. It was in Seoul that the Paralympic Summer Games were held directly after the 1988 Summer Olympics, in the same host city, and using the majority of the venues. This set a precedent that was followed in 1992, 1996 and 2000. It was eventually formalized in an agreement between the International Paralympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee in 2001, and was extended through 2020. On 10 March 2018, the two committees further extended their contract to 2032. Despite being held in the same region, the 1992 Winter Paralympics used different competition venues than those used for the Olympic Games. 1994 Winter Paralympics were the first Winter Games to use the same venues and had the same Organizing Committee as the Winter Olympics.
Winter Games
The first Winter Paralympic Games were held in 1976 in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden. This was the first Paralympics in which multiple categories of athletes with disabilities could compete. The Winter Games were celebrated every four years on the same year as their summer counterpart, just as the Olympics were. This tradition was upheld through the 1992 Games in Albertville, France; after that, beginning with the 1994 Games, the Winter Paralympics and the Winter Olympics have been held in those even-numbered years separate from the Summer Olympics. The winter games happen two years after the summer games.International Paralympic Committee
The International Paralympic Committee is the global governing body of the Paralympic Movement. It comprises 178 National Paralympic Committees and four disability-specific international sports federations. The president of the IPC is Andrew Parsons. The IPC's international headquarters are in Bonn, Germany. The IPC is responsible for organizing the Summer and Winter Paralympic Games. It also serves as the International Federation for nine sports. This requires the IPC to supervise and coordinate the World Championships and other competitions for each of the nine sports it regulates.IPC membership also includes National Paralympic Committees and international sporting federations. International Federations are independent sport federations recognized by the IPC as the sole representative of a Paralympic Sport. International Federations responsibilities include technical jurisdiction and guidance over the competition and training venues of their respective sports during the Paralympic Games. The IPC also recognizes media partners, certifies officials, judges, and is responsible for enforcing the bylaws of the Paralympic Charter.
Since its creation in 1989, IPC has a cooperative relationship with the International Olympic Committee. Delegates of the IPC are also members of the IOC and participate on IOC committees and commissions. The two governing bodies remain distinct, with separate Games, despite the close working relationship.
The Paralympic Games were designed to emphasize the participants' athletic achievements and not their disability. Recent games have emphasized that these games are about ability and not disability. The movement has grown dramatically since its early days – for example, the number of athletes participating in the Summer Paralympic Games has increased from 400 athletes in Rome in 1960 to 4,342 athletes from 159 countries in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Both the Paralympic Summer and Winter Games are recognized on the world stage.
Unlike the Olympic Games, English is the official language of the Paralympic movement. The other languages used at each Paralympic Games are the official languages of the host country or host region. Every proclamation is spoken in these two or more languages.
Name and symbols
Although the name was originally coined as a portmanteau combining paraplegic and Olympic, the inclusion of other disability groups meant that this was no longer considered very accurate. The present formal explanation for the name is that it derives from the Greek preposition παρά, pará and thus refers to a competition held in parallel with the Olympic Games. The Summer Games of 1988 held in Seoul was the first time the term Paralympic came into official use."Spirit in Motion" is the current motto for the Paralympic movement. The current Paralympic flag is used since 2020 and contains three colours, red, blue, and green, which are the colours most widely represented in the flags of nations. The colours are each in the shape of an Agito, which is the name given to an asymmetrical crescent specially designed for the Paralympic movement. The three Agitos circle a central point, which is a symbol for the athletes congregating from all points of the globe. The motto and symbol of the IPC were changed in 2003 to their current versions. The change was intended to convey the idea that Paralympians have a spirit of competition and that the IPC as an organization realizes its potential and is moving forward to achieve it. The vision of the IPC is, "To enable Paralympic athletes to achieve sporting excellence and to inspire and excite the world." The Paralympic anthem is "Hymne de l'Avenir" or "Anthem of the Future". It was composed by Thierry Darnis and adopted as the official anthem in March 1996.