The Paralympic Movement - Young World Club 
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The Paralympic Movement

  • POSTED ON: 16 Mar, 2018
  • TOTAL VIEWS: 988 Views
  • POSTED BY: Chari Vijayaraghavan
  • ARTICLE POINTS: 100 Points

Sport for athletes with an impairment has existed for more than 100 years, and the first sport clubs for the deaf were already in existence in 1888 in Berlin. It was only after World War II however, that it was widely introduced. The purpose of it at that time was to assist the large number of war veterans and civilians who had been injured during wartime.

In 1944, at the request of the British Government, Dr. Ludwig Guttmann opened a spinal injuries centre at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Great Britain, and in time, rehabilitation sport evolved to recreational sport and then to competitive sport. There are twenty-two sports on the Summer Paralympic program and five sports on the Winter Paralympics program. Within some of the sports are several events.

Olena Iurkovska of Ukraine competing on cross-country sit-skis at the 2010 Winter Paralympics.The Swedish goalball team at the 2004 Summer Paralympics.

A 2010 study by the University of British Columbia (UBC) on the Olympic Games Impact (OGI), showed that the 2010 Paralympic and Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada triggered additional accessibility of buildings, sidewalks and public spaces. 23 percent of employers said the Games had increased their willingness to hire people with disabilities.

Chief Executive Officer for the International Paralympic Committee, Xavier Gonzalez, said about the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing, China, that “In China, the (Paralympic) Games were really a transformation tool for changing attitudes across the board in China towards people with disability, to building accessibility facilities in the city, to changing laws to allow people with a disability to be part of society.”

Let’s hope India becomes more accessible too!

Source: Wikipedia | Wikimedia Commons | Paralympic.org