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Paralympics
and how it all started...!
The Paralympic Games was a sporting event organized by Sir Ludwig
Guttmann in Stoke Mandeville, England in 1948. His original idea
was to get British World War II veteran patients with spinal cord
injuries involved in some sort of physical activity.
Four years later, the event was held again in England only this
time Dutch veterans joined their British counterparts, marking the
first international competition of its kind.
It wasn't until 1960 when Olympic-style competitions for athletes
with a disability were first organized. Officially classified as
the Paralympics, the event was no longer limited to just war veterans.
A total of 400 athletes from 23 countries attended the Games. In
2012, the number of athletes is expected to surpass 4,200.
In 1976 in Toronto, other disability groups were added and the idea
of merging together different disability groups for international
sport competitions was born. That same year, the first Winter Paralympic
Games were held in Sweden. Vancouver will be the 10th edition of
the Winter Paralympic Games.
As the Paralympics grew and other multi-disability competitions
developed, the need to govern these events more efficiently and
speak with one voice to the International Olympic Committee resulted
in the formation of the International Co-ordination Committee of
World Sports Organizations for the Disabled - ICC - in 1982. A year
earlier, the Canadian Federation of Sport Organizations for the
Disabled (CFSOD) was established. It would eventually become the
Canadian Paralympic Committee in 1993.
In 1989, the International Paralympic Committee was formed and by
1992 it had replaced the ICC as the governing body. Canada's Dr.
Robert Steadward, the president of the CFSOD, was appointed the
first president of the IPC.
While the Paralympics have always been held in the same year as
the Olympic Games, it wasn't until the 1988 Paralympic Games and
the 1992 Winter Paralympic Games that they have been staged at the
same venues as the Olympics. In 2001, an agreement between the International
Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee guarantees
that as of 2012, the host city for the Summer and Winter Olympics
will be obliged to host the Paralympics.
Today the Paralympics are for athletes from six different disability
groups - Amputee, Cerebral Palsy, Intellectual Disability, Wheelchair,
Visually Impaired and Les Autres which encompasses athletes with
a physical disability that does not fall strictly under one of the
other categories.
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