Where, and when, did the first Paralympic Games take place?
Nowadays, the Paralympic Games are the second biggest sport event in the world. The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, the opening ceremony for which is scheduled for August 28, 2024 on the Place de la Concorde in the French capital, are expected to be the biggest and most diverse yet.
The sporting movement that became the Paralympic Games was created, as the Stoke Mandeville Games, by Dr. Ludwig Guttman, on July 29, 1948. To coincide with the opening ceremony of the 1948 Summer Olympics, Dr. Guttman organised a low-key sports competition for paraplegic, wheelchair-bound patients at the spinal injuries centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, which he had founded four years earlier. A total of 16 injured servicemen and women, all British and all World War II veterans, competed in archery and netball events.
In 1952, a team of veterans from the Netherlands joined their British counterparts for the first International Stoke Mandeville Games. The first “official” Paralympic Games were staged in Rome in 1960 and have continued, as a quadrennial, Olympic-style event, ever since. Indeed, since the late twentieth century, following an agreement between the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), the Olympics and Paralympics have been staged in the same cities and venues.
The 1960 Rome Paralympic Games featured 400 athletes from 23 countries competing in just eight sports. By contrast, the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games is expected to attract over 4,400 athletes from over180 countries competing in 22 sports and a total of 549 medal events. Unlike at the two previous Games, which both featured two sports making their Paralympic debut, the IPC has opted not to add any new sports to the 2024 programme.