An Incomplete History of Sports for Persons with a Physical Disabilities
While sport has value in anyone's life, it is even more important in the life of a person with a disability. This is because of sport's rehabilitative influence. More importantly, sport teaches independence and builds self-confidence.
Sport for athletes with a disability has existed for more than 100 years. In the 19th Century health professionals began to see that sporting activities were very important for the re-education and rehabilitation of persons with a disability.
Sports clubs for the deaf were in existence in 1888 in Berlin. The world organization of sport for the deaf -CISS- was founded in 1922. Nevertheless, the deaf were never involved with other disabilities and organized, and still organize, their own world games; the Silent Games.
Wheelchair sports got started in the late 1940s in England when Sir Ludwig Guttman (founder of the Spinal Injury Center in Stoke-Mandeville, England) began Europe's first organized wheelchair sports program with paralyzed veteran of WWII. (The International Stoke-Mandeville Games, have been held annually ever since.
Basketball was the prime wheelchair sport practiced around the world and the National Wheelchair Basketball Association was founded in the US in 1949.
IN 1956 the National Wheelchair Athletic Association was founded in New York in conjunction with the first National Wheelchair Games at Adelphi College. The initial impetus grew out of the interests of athletes with disabilities who wanted to participate in sports other than basketball, which had seen rapid growth in the early 1950's. The NWAA program appealed to even greater numbers of athletes because it was able to incorporate women and quadriplegics who didn't have the numbers or the ability to play basketball.
Olympic Style Games for athletes with a disability were organized for the first time in Rome in 1960. These games, caed the Papalympics, were organized for persons with a spinal cord injury. The Paralympics are held on a quadrennial schedule.
The Vth International Games, organized in Toronto in 1976, included other disabilities; blind and amputees. In Arnhem, the Netherlands in 1980, cerebral palsied athletes joined the games.
In 1982 the International Coordinating Committee of Sports for the Disabled in the World (ICC) was founded. The "International Coordinating Committee" was originally composed of the four presidents of CP-ISRA (Cerebral Palsy), IBSA (the blind), ISMGF (sci) and ISOD (all others with physical disabilities like spina bifida and amputees). The "International Association of Sports for Persons with a Mental Handicap" joined the ICC around 1986. The first all inclusive, multi-disability Paralympics were held in Seoul in 1988.
Last updated on 20 Nov 2009 at 5:08 pm by Eli
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