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Paralympics history
Courtesy of WeMedia.com, Official Webcaster of the 2000 Paralympic Games By David Rosner The Paralympic Games parallel the story of disability sports not just in terms of evolution (from rehabilitation to competition), but of revolution (to high-performance sport). It's the story of a movement that knows no limits, no confines, no boundaries, only ever-expanding possibilities. Of course, the Paralympic Games weren't always the peak of elite competition, weren't always the world's largest sports event after the Olympics, weren't always the fastest-growing movement in international sports. But they were always, even before the first Olympic-style competition for athletes with disabilities debuted in 1960, infused with the Paralympic spirit. That Paralympic spirit can be traced to 1948 when Sir Ludwig Guttmann, a German-born neurosurgeon who emigrated to England in 1939 as a refugee from Nazi occupation, organized an athletic competition in Stoke Mandeville for World War II veterans with spinal cord injuries. Four years earlier, at the British government's request to open Stoke Mandeville Hospital's National Spinal Injury Centre, mainly to treat wounded servicemen, Dr. Guttmann had introduced a new medical approach embracing sport as a paramount therapy in the total rehabilitation of paralyzed patients. What began as rehabilitative recreation evolved into athletic competition-with Guttmann emerging as "The Father of Disabled Sport." On July 28, 1948, symbolically coinciding with the opening of the Olympic Games in London, the Stoke Mandeville Games for the Paralyzed launched the first competition for wheelchair athletes. That competition on the tarmac of the hospital's helicopter pad grew into an international movement four years later, when Dutch ex-servicemen joined the British veterans of the inaugural event to compete in the second Stoke Mandeville Games. By 1960 the movement had evolved into the first Olympic-style event for athletes with disabilities-what we now call the Paralympic Games. As if to underscore its Olympic parallel as well as properly mark the momentous occasion, the 400 athletes from 23 nations competed at the same Rome venues which just a few weeks earlier had hosted the 1960 Olympics. Indeed, the Paralympic Games were named for their mission to parallel the Olympic Games (literally combining the word "para," Latin for "with," and the word "Olympics"). But for all their similarities to the Olympics, right down to sharing venues this year in Sydney, the Paralympics-now more than 4,000 world-class athletes strong-remain unique among all sports events.
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