The history of the Paralympics
An archery competition among war veterans in 1948 was the beginning of one of the greatest sporting events in the world – the Paralympic Games.
Image: Team GB athlete Hannah Cockroft competes at the Tokyo Paralympics | hairul_nizam / Shutterstock.com
The Paralympic Games are a global sporting event drawing in massive audiences all around the world. According to the Paralympics’ 2022 annual report, the 2022 Beijing Games garnered 2.1 billion viewers.
The 2024 Paris Paralympics will involve over 4,000 athletes. In contrast, the 1948 competition that inspired the Paralympics had just 16 competitors. Over the years, that small contest grew into the historic event we know today.
The precursors to the Paralympics
As we all know, the ancient Olympic Games took place in Greece. Between 776 BC and 393 AD, they were held every four years. In 1896, the Olympics were revived with a competition in Athens. However, the Paralympics did not occur alongside the Olympics for many years.
In fact, the story of the Paralympics begins in England with the Stoke Mandeville Games, named after the Stoke Mandeville war veterans’ hospital with which they were associated. Ludwig Guttman, a neurosurgeon at the hospital, organised these games for the World War II veterans who were his patients.
As the 1948 Olympic Games took place in London, 16 men and women at Stoke Mandeville competed in archery while using wheelchairs. Thus, the Paralympic Games were connected – unofficially – with the Olympic Games right from their inception.
Four years later, the contest was repeated as the International Stoke Mandeville Games, now involving veterans from the Netherlands as well as Britain.
From 1952 to 1960, the International Stoke Mandeville competition occurred yearly, and its attendance grew. By 1955, 200 athletes from 18 countries were involved.
The first Paralympics
In 1960, the International Stoke Mandeville Games brought together athletes from 23 countries in Rome just after the Olympics ended in the Italian capital. Although this contest was not called the Paralympic Games at the time, it is now seen as the first Paralympics. The games had grown again, now hosting 400 competitors.
At this point, the games were still only for people with spinal injuries who used wheelchairs. The athletes took part in eight sports, some of which modern Paralympics watchers will recognise – such as para-archery. However, the sport of dartchery, a hybrid of darts and archery, has not been practised at the Paralympics since 1980. Darts, incidentally, is among the sports that have never been a part of the Olympics.
How the games have evolved
In 1984, the International Stoke Mandeville Games officially became the Paralympic Games.
Over time, the Paralympics have grown to include more competitors, more countries, more types of disabilities, and more sports. In 2024, there are officially 22 summer Paralympic sports and six winter ones.
Since 1960, summer Paralympics have taken place every four years. The first Winter Paralympic Games were held in Sweden in 1976 – while the Olympics that year were in Montreal. It was not until 1988 that the Paralympics took place in the same sporting venues and cities as the Olympics. Gradually, the Olympics and Paralympics have become more connected, and in 2001 an agreement was reached that the Olympics and Paralympics would always share the same site and amenities.
After amputees advocated in 1972 to take part in the Paralympics, 1976 saw people with other categories of disabilities – amputations and blindness – able to compete in the Paralympic Games. More categories of disability were added over the years, so that the modern-day Paralympic Games now features 10 types of disability, including short stature, impaired muscle power and intellectual disability.
Notable records and competitors
Sarah Storey, made a Dame in 2012, is a swimmer and cyclist who has earned an astonishing 17 Paralympic gold medals – the most ever earned by a British athlete. She is also notable for her long career, beginning in 1992 when she was just 14, and continuing in the 2024 games. In fact, having earned 44 Paralympic medals in total, she is the third-most decorated Paralympian of all time and undoubtedly one of the greatest ever British sportswomen.
The previous record holder for British medals was swimmer Mike Kenney, with 16 gold medals. In the 1970s and 80s, he also broke several world records.
Tanni Grey-Thompson is a Paralympic sportswoman who, having earned 13 gold medals and nine others in the sports of athletics and wheelchair basketball, has gone on to take a number of leadership roles in British sport. After receiving an OBE and MBE for her services to sport, she was made a Baroness in 2010. In 2019, she also won an award for Lifetime Achievement at the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year ceremony.
Another British Paralympian who has earned fame is Lauren Steadman, a gold medallist in para-triathlon. In 2018, she competed in the semi-finals of the TV programme Strictly Come Dancing.
