History of the Paralympics

The Paralympics have come a long way from its humble beginnings as a rehabilitation programme for British war veterans with spinal injuries.

Back in 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttman, a neurologist who was working with World War II veterans with spinal injuries at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury, began using sport as part of the rehabilitation programmes of his patients.

He set up a competition with other hospitals to coincide with the London Olympics in that year.

Over the next decade Guttman's care plan was adopted by other spinal injury units in Britain and competition grew.

In 1960, the Olympics were held in Rome, and Guttmann brought 400 wheelchair athletes to the Olympic city to compete. The modern Parallel Olympics (or "Paralympics") were born.

Britain's first ever gold medal was won by Margaret Maughan that year in archery - the first sport to be included in Guttman's treatment plans.

In 1964, the able-bodied athletes went to Tokyo for the Olympics and shortly afterward the Japanese capital also played host to the disabled athletes.

The games in Japan saw the introduction of wheelchair racing - although only in the normal day-to-day chairs rather than the space age machines used by the Paralympians of today.

While the Olympics went to Mexico in 1968, the Paralympics were staged in Israel and four years later were held in Heidelberg while the Olympics were in Munich.

They saw more than 1,000 athletes from 44 countries participating and people with quadriplegic spinal injuries competed for the first time while visually impaired athletes took part in demonstration events.

The visually impaired took a full part in medal events in Toronto in 1976. Their participation, along with debuts for amputee and mixed disabilities ("les autres"), athletes boosted the number of competitors to 1600.

Specialised racing wheelchairs were used for the first time.

The Paralympic movement invited athletes with cerebral-palsy to compete for the first time.

Four years later, Britain and the United States joined forces as hosts with events being held at Stoke Mandeville and New York. The Wheelchair Marathon race was added to the competition for the first time.

The 1980's ended on a high note for the Paralympic movement, with the 1988 games in Seoul.

The Koreans decided that the games should be truly "parallel" and so they were staged on the same scale and lines as the Olympics.

It saw an unprecedented level of co-operation between the organising committees of the Olympics and Paralympics.

The 1992 Barcelona Paralympics took the Games one step further with 3,500 athletes from 82 countries competing in front packed stadia.

Following the Barcelona Games, athletes with learning disabilities had their own Paralympics in Madrid.

Unfortunately a lot of the good work of Barcelona was undone four years later in Atlanta.

The Paralympic Organising Committee received little help from their Olympic counterparts and athletes complained about the facilities in the Olympic Village and about the city's transport system.

The athletes competed in almost empty venues.

However, it was not all bad - Atlanta was the first Paralympic games to benefit from having world-wide sponsors, athletes with learning disabilities were integrated into the main programme, equestrian was added to the list of sports, with sailing and wheelchair rugby being included as demonstration events.

Atlanta 1996 also saw a record number of participating nations and record number of world bests set.

Sydney was the first city in the southern hemisphere to host the Paralympics.

A staggering 132 countries took part with rugby and wheelchair basketball given full medal status, but the Games was not without some controversy.

Joy soon turned to shame when Spain's intellectually disabled basketball team were stripped of their medals after an investigation by the Spanish Paralympic Committee proved only two out of their 12 players suffered from a mental disability.

But this failed to taint the overall success of the Games, which enjoyed packed stadiums and unprecedented media coverage across the world - making it the best Paralympics ever.

Of the record 135 nations competing at the 2004 Athens Paralympics, there were 17 new countries competing in 19 sports.

Just under 4,000 athletes took part, setting 304 new world records and 448 Paralympic records.

China topped the medal table for the first time; Britain was second with 35 gold medals out of a total of 94.

Two British swimmers won four gold medals each - Dave Roberts and Jim Anderson.

Among the best individual performers were Japanese swimmer Mayumi Narita who won seven gold and one bronze medal.

And Canadian wheelchair athlete Chantal Peticlerc claimed five gold medals in the 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m and 1,500m races, setting three world records.

It is all a far cry from the movement's humble beginnings in in Stoke Mandeville.

Paralympics celebrate 60 years of competition in Beijing

India's greatest sporting achievements since Independence

Abhinav Bindra winning olympic gold
Abhinav Bindra finally gave Indians something to cheer about at the ongoing Beijing Games as he won India's first-ever individual gold medal in the Olympics on August 11, 2008. Bindra outshot Athens Games champion Zhu Qinan of China won the silver and Henri Hakkinen of Finland in the 10m Air Rifle shooting final to send the Indian delegation in Beijing and a billion plus Indians back at home the perfect Independence Day gift.




1983 Cricket World Cup win
The Kapil Dev-led Indian team shocked the mighty West Indies to win the country's only Cricket World Cup (50 overs) as yet. Apart from Kapil and Sunil Gavaskar, the team really didn't have any superstars to boast of, but team work and determination helped Kapil's Devils climb the peak of cricketing glory. It was after this victory that cricket really cuaght the fancy of Indian fans and encouraged a whole generation of youngsters to take up the game.




Sunil Gavaskar first to 10,000 Test runs
Sunil Manohar Gavaskar made history when he scored his 10,000th Test run in a match against Pakistan in the 1986-87 season. This was the first time in the history of Test cricket that a batsman's career aggregate touched five figures. And, though Allan Border, Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar have all scored more than 11,000 Test runs, it was Gavaskar who first climed the mountain of 10,000+ Test runs.




Rajyavardhan Rathore winning Olympic silver
Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore's silver medal winning effort in the Men's Double Trap at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games equalled India's best individual Olympic performance until Abhinav Bindra won the country's first individual gold medal at Beijing. Rathore, however, can take satisfaction in that it was his effort in Athens that really increased Indians' awareness and excitement about shooting as a sport.





The 'Indian Express'
From 1996 to 2002, the doubles team of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi, known in tennis circles as 'Indian Express' were one of the most dominant pairing in men's tennis. Paes and Bhupathi won the Wimbledon and the French Open in 1999, becoming the first Indian pair to win a doubles event at a Grand slam event. The pair has also won gold medals at the 2002 Asian Games in Busan and the 2006 Asian Games in Doha.



Narain Karthikeyan in F1
Though he didn't have a great debut season with Jordan in 2005, Narain Karthikeyan nevertheless can gain satisfaction from the fact that he put India on the F1 map. His ability to reach the pinnacle of motor sport has inspired the likes of Karun Chandhok and Armaan Ebrahim to emulate Karthikeyan's efforts.




Sania Mirza breaking through
Sania Mirza has done for Indian women's tennis what nobody before ever did -- to put it on the world's tennis map! Apart from being one of the most glamourous players on the WTA circuit, Sania also has one of the strongest forehands on the tour. Though she has been dragged into endless controversies, Sania's achievements on the court speak for themselves. She became the first Indian woman to be seeded in a Grand Slam tournament at the 2007 US Open where she was seeded 26th. Sania is also the first Indian woman to reach the fourth round of a Grand Slam tournament (2005 US Open), and the first Indian woman to win a WTA singls title (Hyderabad Open 2005).




India's first Test series win overseas
India's 1-0 Test series win in England in 1971, coming right on the heels of the triumph in the West Indies soil, underlined India's growing stature in the world stage. The Ajit Wadekar-led team had players like Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Dilip Sardesai, Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan, Gundappa Viswanath, Bishan Singh Bedi, Farokh Engineer and Sunil Gavaskar in its ranks.




India's Twenty20 World Cup win
India's win in the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup in 2007 played in South Africa bore an uncanny resemblance to the country's triumph in the 1983 World Cup. After a nightmare Cricket World Cup 2007 where India crashed out in the first round, not many people gave the Mahendra Singh Dhoni-led team a chance of bringing home the cup. However, Dhoni's determination and passion coupled with a young team that didn't bear any scars of the failure earlier that year, played fearless cricket as they were crowned Twenty20 champions of the world. This win also made the majority of Indians believe in their national cricket team again.

All-time greats in the history of the Olympic Games

Nadia Elena Comaneci
Nadia Elena Comaneci is a winner of five Olympic gold medals, and the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10 in an Olympic gymnastic event. Comaneci was the first Romanian gymnast to win the all-around title at the Olympics. She is also the youngest-ever Olympic gymnastics all-around champion.




Mark Spitz
Mark Spitz gave swimming an unparalleled and unforgettable memory in Munich. A total of seven gold medals, and as many world records, were won by the determined Californian during the Games of 1972, adding to what he described as his "disappointing" haul of five medals in 1968.




Carl Lewis
Carl Lewis won 10 Olympic medals including 9 golds, and 10 World Championships medals, of which 8 were golds, in a career that spanned from 1979 when he first achieved a world ranking to 1996 when he last won an Olympic title and subsequently retired. He was voted "Sportsman of the Century" by the International Olympic Committee and was also named "Olympian of the Century" by Sports Illustrated. He also helped transform track and field from its nominal amateur status to its current professional status.




Paavo Nurmi
If long distance running was in need of a role model, one would have to look no further than Paavo Nurmi. The legendary Finn smashed an incredible 22 world records, winning nine Olympic golds on the way. Nurmi won a total of 12 Olympic medals across three Games --- 1920, 1924 and 1928.




Jesse Owens
The German head of state had done everything in its power to leave a taste of Nazi propaganda in the mouths of all the competing nations at the 1936 Olympic Games. Jesse Owens, born the son of a slave in 1913 in segregated Alabama, however, left his own mark by winning four gold medals which would turn Adolf Hitler's theory of racial supremacy on its head.




Dawn Fraser
Whether it was due to a modest background, or a refusal to give up swimming even when banned in the early stages of her career, Dawn Fraser's determination led her to battle adversity and ultimately conquer the sprint events at three consecutive Olympic Games -- 1956, 1960 and 1964. Three Olympic gold titles in 1956, 1960 and 1964 in the 100m freestyle eventually brought the daughter of a Sydney docker justified success. She won a total of eight Olympic medals.




Bob Beamon
Robert "Bob" Beamon leapt to world prominence with a stunning long-jump gold in the 1968 Mexico Games. A virtual flight of 8.90m also broke the Olympic and world records, earning the American a deserved place in athletics history. Beamon's mark was not bettered until the 1991 Tokyo world championships when his compatriot Mike Powell jumped 8.95m.




Fanny Blankers-Koen
Fanny Blankers-Koen won four gold medals at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. She accomplished this as a mother of two, during a time when many disregarded women's athletics. Her background and performances earned her the nickname "the Flying Housewife."




Michael Johnson
At the Atlanta Games of 1996 Michael Johnson not only became the first athlete to take Olympic golds in both the 200m and 400m, but shattered the 200m world record with an eye-opening time of 19.32sec. In all, he won five gold medals across three Olympic Games.




Greg Louganis
Greg Louganis can simply be described as the total diver. At age 16, he took part in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, where he placed second in the tower event. in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, Louganis won gold medals in both the springboard and tower diving events. He repeated his 1984 feat in the 1988 Seoul Olympics, although not without drama. Louganis suffered an injury, hitting his head on the diving board during the preliminary rounds while performing a reverse 2 1/2 pike; he completed the preliminaries, despite a concussion, then went on to repeat the dive during the finals, with nearly perfect scores, earning him the gold medal.




Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Jackie Joyner-Kersee is ranked among the all-time greatest athletes in the women's heptathlon as well as in the women's long jump. She won three gold, one silver, and two bronze Olympic medals, in those two different events. "Sports Illustrated" magazine voted her the Greatest Female Athlete of the 20th century.




Steve Redgrave
Great Britain's now legendary rower Steve Redgrave pushed his ageing body through more gruelling punishment at the Sydney Olympics as he won his fifth gold medal at consecutive Games - a feat never before achieved in endurance events. After previous victories from Los Angeles (1984) to Sydney 2000, he finally retired from the sport in 2000, and was given a knighthood for his remarkable achievements.




Kristin Otto
East Germany's Olympic swimming champion Kristin Otto is truly unique for the display of talent in three separate styles -- freestyle, backstroke and butterfly -- which brought her six gold medals during the Seoul Games of 1988.




Abebe Bikila
With his win in the marathon in the 1960 Rome Olympics, Abebe Bikila became the first black African Olympic champion. Bikila, who ran the marathon barefoot in Rome ntered Olympic history with a world best time of 2:15:16.2. Bikila also won the gold in the 1964 Games in Tokyo -- this time he ran with shoes and once again set a new world best time of 2:12:11.2.




Olga Korbut
Olga Korbut is a Belarusian, Soviet-born gymnast who won four gold medals and two silver medals at the Summer Olympics, in which she competed in 1972 and 1976 for the USSR team. At the 1972 Munich Olympics, she became the first person to do a backward somersault on the balance beam in competition. She was also the first to do a standing backward somersault on bars, and a back somersault to swingdown (Korbut Flip) on beam.

OLYMPIC MYTHOLOGY

Zeus was considered the most important of all the Olympic gods. He was originally worshipped as a god of meteorological change. He quickly became the god of fertility however, and was worshipped as Zeus the "infernal" (hthonios) or "farmer" (georgos). As Zeus the possessor (ktisios), he offered a good harvest; as Zeus the father (pater), he protected the family and all who lived nearby. He was thus honoured on the altar in the courtyard. As Zeus the brother (fratius), he protected blood relations and as Zeus the patron saint (poliouhos), the whole town. Before long, Zeus was worshipped as a Supreme Being of prudence and wisdom who determined the fate of man and justly set the moral order of the world.

Hera was the sister and wife of Zeus and was worshipped all over Greece, but especially in the region of Argos. She was thus also called "Argeia". The epithets "perfect", "balanced", "wedded" were used to describe her because she was considered the protector of marriage and the marital bond. Homer depicts Hera in her dual capacity as the most important female deity, but also the official spouse of the father of the gods.

ATHENA
The ancient Greeks believed that Athena was miraculously born out of the head of Zeus. She was first worshipped in the palaces of the Achaean rulers in the Pre-Hellenistic period. In Homer’s work, she is depicted as a warrior goddess wearing full armour from the prehistoric era. She was as important as Aris, the god of war, and favoured the prudent outcome of confrontations.

Apollo was the god of moral order and music, but his main capacity was to protect the art of divination. This is revealed by the plethora of oracles in various regions of Greece, the most famous being the oracle of Delphi, in Fokis. Apollo is also seen as a pastoral god, protecting his flock from the wolves. He was worshipped by the farmers as the god of the harvest. From Antiquity onwards, he had the reputation of a god of healing.

Ancient Olympic Games

Ancient Olympic Games 776 B.C. - 393 A.D.
Olympia, the site of the ancient Olympic Games, is in the western part of the Peloponnese which, according to Greek mythology, is the island of "Pelops", the founder of the Olympic Games. Imposing temples, votive buildings, elaborate shrines and ancient sporting facilities were combined in a site of unique natural and mystical beauty.

Olympia functioned as a meeting place for worship and other religious and political practices as early as the 10th century B.C. The central part of Olympia was dominated by the majestic temple of Zeus, with the temple of Hera parallel to it. The ancient stadium in Olympia could accommodate more than 40,000 spectators, while in the surrounding area there were auxiliary buildings which developed gradually up until the 4th century B.C. and were used as training sites for the athletes or to house the judges of the Games.

The Olympic Games were closely linked to the religious festivals of the cult of Zeus, but were not an integral part of a rite. Indeed, they had a secular character and aimed to show the physical qualities and evolution of the performances accomplished by young people, as well as encouraging good relations between the cities of Greece. According to specialists, the Olympic Games owed their purity and importance to religion.

The Olympic victor received his first awards immediately after the competition. Following the announcement of the winner's name by the herald, a Hellanodikis (Greek judge) would place a palm branch in his hands, while the spectators cheered and threw flowers to him. Red ribbons were tied on his head and hands as a mark of victory.

The official award ceremony would take place on the last day of the Games, at the elevated vestibule of the temple of Zeus. In a loud voice, the herald would announce the name of the Olympic winner, his father's name, and his homeland. Then, the Hellanodikis placed the sacred olive tree wreath, or kotinos, on the winner's head.

Past Olympic Games since 1896

The Games have always brought people together in peace to respect universal moral principles. The upcoming Games will feature athletes from all over the world and help promote the Olympic spirit.

Olympic Summer Games: Athens 1896
Paris 1900
St Louis 1904
London 1908
Stockholm 1912
Antwerp 1920
Paris 1924
Amsterdam 1928
Los Angeles 1932
Berlin 1936
London 1948
Helsinki 1952
Melbourne / Stockholm 1956
Rome 1960
Tokyo 1964
Mexico 1968
Munich 1972
Montreal 1976
Moscow 1980
Los Angeles 1984
Seoul 1988
Barcelona 1992
Atlanta 1996
Sydney 2000
Athens 2004

Olympic Winter Games:
Chamonix 1924
St. Moritz 1928
Lake Placid 1932
Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1936
St. Moritz 1948
Oslo 1952
Cortina d'Ampezzo 1956
Squaw Valley 1960
Innsbruck 1964
Grenoble 1968
Sapporo 1972
Innsbruck 1976
Lake Placid 1980
Sarajevo 1984
Calgary 1988
Albertville 1992
Lillehammer 1994
Nagano 1998
Salt Lake City 2002
Turin 2006

The Olympic Rings

"These five rings -- blue, yellow, black, green and red -- represent the five parts of the world now encompassed by Olympism and ready to compete against each other. Moreover, the six colours (including the white background) thus combined represent those of all nations, without exception. The blue and yellow of Sweden, the blue and white of Greece, the French, English, American, German, Belgian, Italian and Hungarian tricolours, the yellow and red of Spain are side by side with the new Brazilian and Australian flags, the old Japan and the new China. It is a true international emblem."

Coubertin (Selected Writings II, p. 460, 1913).

As an image of Olympism, Coubertin thought the rings had deep significance: that of the union between men. He multiplied the image to create a total of five rings. He designed and commissioned the Olympic flag to mark the 20th anniversary of the IOC's founding, on 23rd June 1914 in Paris. Coubertin never said nor wrote that he saw a link between the colours of the rings and the continents. For him, the five rings represented the union of the five continents, but the colours were merely those that appeared in all the different national flags at the time.

-- The results of a survey carried out in six countries (Australia, Germany, India, Japan, Great Britain and the USA) in 1995 showed that 92% of those questioned correctly identified the Olympic rings, which made them the most-recognised symbol. They were followed by the McDonald's and Shell emblems (88%), Mercedes (74%) and the United Nations (36%). (SRI Sponsorship Research International).

-- 86% of those questioned associated the Olympic rings with the world's greatest sports event: the Olympic Games. (SRI Sponsorship Research International, 1995).

(Credit: IOC.)