The Olympic Games

THE Paralympic Games is the Olympics for athletes with disabilities. It started with Ludwig Guttmann, a Jewish neurologist who fled Germany during World War 2. He established a centre for spinal injuries at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire, England. That same year he also organised the first Stoke Mandeville Games in which 16 disabled war veterans competed.

In 1952 the games became international when Dutch athletes took part. This event became the Paralympic Games, held for the first time alongside the Olympics in 1960 in Rome, Italy. The first Paralympic Winter Games took place in 1976 in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden.

The name originally referred to paraplegics but as athletes with other disabilities began to is Greek for “alongside”). Paralympic athletes compete in three groups: physical, visual and intellectual impairment.