The goal of the Paralympic Games, according to the International Paralympic Committee handbook, is “to provide the opportunity for persons with a disability to engage in a high level of competitive sport.”

The Paralympics have an involved history that intertwines numerous sports organizations and governing bodies. These organizations, since 1992, have been under the umbrella of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC). The games were originally for wheelchair athletes but have been expanded so that in the 2000 games in Sydney there were classifications for athletes with amputations, cerebral palsy, dwarfism, blindness, deafness and mental impairment. Due to the nature of the divisions, there were 700 medal events in the Paralympics of 1996—double the number of events in the Olympic Games.

Specifically at the 2000 Sydney Paralympic Games, the divisions were:

Classes 11, 12, 13—Blind Athletes (International Blind Sports Association, IBSA).

Class 20—Intellectually Disabled Athletes (International Sports Organization for the Disabled, INAS-FID).

Classes 33-38—different levels of Cerebral Palsy (Cerebral Palsy-International Sports and Recreation Association, CP-ISRA).

Classes 42-46—different levels of amputees and “other disabilities,” known as Les Autres (International Sports Organization for Disabled, ISOD).

Classes 51-58—those with spinal cord injuries and amputee athletes competing in wheelchairs (International Stoke Mandeville Wheelchair Sports Federation [ISMWSF]).

In 1960, the International Working Group on Sport for the Disabled was set up to help establish sporting events and rules for the blind, for amputees, and for athletes with cerebral palsy, who up to that time had no sports organizations. In 1964 this group became known as ISOD, the International Sport Organization for the Disabled.¹

In 1982, an International Coordinating Committee (ICC) for World Sports Organizations for the Disabled was begun. This group had four international federations as members: International Sports Organization for the Disabled (ISOD), the International Stoke Mandeville Wheelchair Sports Federation (ISMWSF), the International Blind Sports Association (IBSA), and the Cerebral Palsy International Sports and Recreation Association (CP-ISRA). In 1992, the name of this umbrella organization was changed to the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).

The first games to become known as the Paralympic Games were held in Rome in 1960, though at the time they were not called the Paralympic Games. From 1964 to 1972, they were called the International Stoke Mandeville Games—Olympics of the Paralyzed, and the games were only open to athletes with spinal cord injuries.

The 1960 games were organized by the International Stoke Mandeville Games Federation that had been holding the Stoke Mandeville Wheelchair Games in England since 1948 under the guidance of Sir Ludwig Guttman. The first year that Guttman was successful in holding the games in the same city as the Olympic Games was 1960. Pope John XXIII made a special appearance and addressed the athletes.

The games of 1964 took place in Tokyo using the Olympic village and facilities in the same way the 1960 games used the Olympic facilities of Rome. Prince Akihito and Princess Michiko were present at the opening ceremony. Media coverage was good, with newspapers, radio and television all covering the events. The 1964 games were the first in which athletes actually raced in their wheelchairs.

Mexico City was not able to hold the 1968 games—altitude and problems of organization the two main considerations—so Israel volunteered to hold them. One athlete, Roberto Marson of Italy, won nine gold medals in three sports—swimming, fencing and athletics.

The 1972 and 1976 games were held in Heidelberg, West Germany, and Toronto, Canada, the nations if not the cities of the Olympic hosts of those years. The West German hosts wanted to stage the games in Munich after the Olympics but were not able to get permission to use the village and facilities in Munich. The games did branch out with the first events for quadriplegics and demonstration goalball for blind athletes.

The first instance of political disturbances in the games was in 1976, over the inclusion of a team from South Africa. Kenya and Yugoslavia decided ahead of time not to send teams to the games if South Africa was included. Cuba, Hungary, India and Jamaica arrived at the games and then withdrew. Poland pulled out in the middle of the games after winning a number of medals.

The inclusion of South Africa had financial implications for the games as well. When the Canadian federal government withdrew its support of $500,000 over the South African issue, the provincial government of Ontario was compelled to make up the difference.

Ironically, South Africa was one of the nations bidding for the games of 1980. Dr. Guttman defended South Africa in a press conference, saying that the South African Disabled Sport Association had rewritten its constitution to eliminate any references to segregation, and during his visit to South Africa he had personally witnessed mixed teams competing together.

One Hungarian athlete took the opportunity to defect during the 1976 games. He had the good fortune of hailing a taxi outside the village in the middle of the night, a taxi that happened to be driven by a former Hungarian citizen who was able to understand his every word.

A final controversy of the 1976 games was the revelation that some athletes were inclined to cheat during the physical evaluations which were used to place them in classifications to ensure fair competition. Canadian swimmer Barney Fegyverneki was quoted as saying, “classification is really not that hard to beat. All you have to do to bugger them up is to pretend you are having difficulty doing whatever they ask you to do and they will put you in a lower class.” Much was made of the comments, with many doctors admitting that the classification system had weaknesses and that it was not an easy task to classify disabled athletes. Bob Steadward, a Canadian official who was later to become president of the International Paralympic Committee, defended the classification system and the doctors’ abilities to correctly classify the athletes.

After Moscow refused to agree to hold the Paralympic Games of 1980, Arnhem, Netherlands, was chosen as host. The Dutch decided not to accept the entry of the South African delegation, hoping to avoid the protest and rancor of the 1976 games over this issue. Dr. Guttman died in March 1980, before the South Africa question could be resolved. The 1980 games were the first to include the participation of athletes with cerebral palsy.

The 1984 games were broken into two parts when Los Angeles refused to hold them. The blind, and those with cerebral palsy and with disabilities other than wheelchair athletes, competed in New York in June 1984 under the eye of IBSA, CP-ISRA and ISOD. U.S. President Ronald Reagan officially opened these games.

The wheelchair athletes from the International Stoke Mandeville Games Federation (ISMGF) who were originally scheduled to compete in Illinois, competed in the “VIIth World Wheelchair Games Paralympics” in Aylesbury, England, from July 22 to August 1.

The term “Paralympics,” though used occasionally, had still not come into consistent use by this time, Guttman himself preferring to use the term “Olympics of the Paralyzed,” and the press terming the games the “Wheelchair Olympics” or “Olympics of the Disabled.” The IOC had never fully approved the use of the term “Olympic” but had not strongly disapproved it either. When the word “Paralympic” was proposed in 1984, the IOC had no difficulties accepting this term. In February 1985, the ICC and IOC came to more formal terms over the issue. The IOC would provide support and financial aid for the disabled athletes, while the disabled sport movement would forgo the use of the word “Olympic” and use “Paralympic” in its place.

The games in Seoul in 1988 were organized by SPOC, the Seoul Paralympic Organizing Committee, which worked in conjunction with the Seoul Olympic Organizing Committee. With 61 nations and 3,053 athletes, the games were a huge leap in size over previous games.

In 1992, the Barcelona Olympic Organizing Committee set up a division of its organization specifically to organize the Paralympics. After the Barcelona Games the name International Coordinating Committee (ICC) was changed to IPC, the International Paralympic Committee.

Drug testing became an accepted reality of the games. Five athletes were caught and suspended, three for steroid violations. In the first real scandal involving doping at the games, the United States lost the wheelchair basketball gold medal when one player tested positive for banned pain-killing drugs. The result was protested, and for a short time the ruling was reversed, but eventually the case was heard before the Court of Arbitration for Sport and the U.S. team was disqualified. The rules in team sports were then changed and now read that only a guilty player is disqualified, not the entire team and results stand.

At the Atlanta Games in 1996, actor Christopher Reeve, paralyzed after an earlier show-jumping accident, was the master of ceremonies at the opening ceremony. U.S. Vice-President Al Gore opened the games and Aretha Franklin, Liza Minelli and Carly Simon provided the musical entertainment. The 1996 Paralympics were the first to include athletes with mental disabilities.

The 1500 meter wheelchair event saw a world record by Australia's Louise Sauvage when she beat out Chantal Petitclerc of Canada and Jean Driscoll of the United States. Sauvage's world record time was 3:30.45. The first six places were under the old world record of 3:36.66. Sauvage also set a world record in the 5,000 meter race in a time of 12:40.71 and also won the 400 and 800 meter races in her division. Petitclerc won the gold in the 100 meters, and silver medals in the 200, 400, 800 and 1500 meters. Finally, Jean Driscoll, third in the 1500, was second in the 5000 and won both the 10,000 (in a world record of 24:21.64) and marathon events. In total, 268 world records were broken in all sports at the Atlanta Paralympics.

The Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games were highly acclaimed and highly successful with 3900 competitors from 122 countries, plus two independent athletes from East Timor. When the East Timorese athletes arrived in Australia, customs agents noticed that they had very little equipment or even clothing with them. They roused the Australian citizens who donated clothing and uniforms.

1.2 million tickets were sold for the games—more than double the number for Atlanta. The athletes competed for 550 gold medals in 18 sports. The Australian people supported the games strongly, purchasing the vast majority of the tickets.

The Paralympic torch was brought into the stadium by Australian Paralympian Katrina Webb, and relayed around the track to Louise Sauvage who lit a special cauldron on the stadium floor which then lit the Paralympic flame above the stadium.

The games were not without several controversies. After physical examinations, athletes of several nationalities were reclassified, causing the British to complain that they would lose several gold medals as a result. Britain's director of swimming performance said, “You've worked to get a world record, but you still get beaten by someone you didn't even know was going to be there.”

Classifications are reviewed every two years and changed in many cases, especially for athletes with degenerative conditions. Athletes may even at times be reclassified after participating in qualifying heats if they show more functionality during the race than they showed during testing.

Bob Matthews of Britain made up for some of the disappointment when he won the 10,000 meter blind race. Matthews had won the 5,000 meter gold in Barcelona and finished second in the Atlanta 5,000 meters, but had been disqualified in that race after his guide runner crossed the line ahead of him.

Another eligibility issue arose when the discus event in the Cerebral Palsy category (F34) was canceled. Shot putter Hamish MacDonald, the Atlanta gold medalist, hoped to switch divisions and compete in the F56 wheelchair division. The Court of Arbitration for Sport ordered a medical evaluation but the medical panel ruled that he did not qualify for the new division.

Some 700 drug tests were carried out at the games, with the result being the highest-profile drug case at a Paralympic games. Brian Frasure of the United States, at the time the 100 meter world record-holder in his division, tested positive for nandrolone after winning two silver medals. He was allowed to keep his medal for the 100 meters but was stripped of the 200 meters medal and given a four-year suspension which was appealed. Ten athletes in total failed drug tests at the games. The other nine were from the sport of powerlifting.

After the games, another troubling development came to light when it was revealed by one of the team members that Spain's intellectually disabled Paralympic basketball team comprised some players who were not intellectually disabled. Some 10 of its 12 members, allegedly, were not handicapped. The incident had immediate and perhaps far-reaching ramifications. The Spanish team returned the gold medals, and the vice president of Spain's Paralympic Committee and president of the Sports Federation for the Intellectually Handicapped, Fernando Martin Vicente, resigned.

Just after the Paralympics, basketball player Carlos Ribagorda wrote in Spain's Capital magazine that he and other medal winners were not mentally disabled. Ribagorda claimed that up to 15 members of Spain's Paralympic team in track and field, table tennis and swimming were not handicapped.

Several weeks later the International Paralympic Committee moved to suspend all intellectually disabled athletes from the Paralympic Games. The International Paralympic Committee concluded that there are “serious problems regarding the determination of eligibility of athletes” in the intellectually disabled class. The IPC also suspended the International Sports Federation for Athletes with an Intellectual Disability.

The beneficiaries of Spain's disqualification were the Russian basketball team. The Russians had been awarded the silver medal and $2000 each from their federation. When the silver medals were upgraded to gold, the Russian federation gave each $3000 more to equal the promised $5000 to each gold-medal winner.

International Paralympic Committee president Dr. Robert Steadward was very pleased with the outcome of the games. He called them “near perfect,” and was pleased that Sydney Olympic and Paralympic organizers had worked side by side.

Before the Sydney Games, Athens had not formally signed a contract with the IPC to host the 2004 Paralympic Games. This was taken care of at Sydney, however.

During the games, the IOC and IPC signed another agreement which stated that “the IOC will formalize its relationship with the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) through a contract or memorandum of understanding. Clear rules concerning the link between the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games must be set.”

The agreement went on to say that “the Paralympics must be organized in the same city as the Olympic Games.” The obligation for the host city to organize the Paralympic Games, it added, must be included in the host city contract and the Paralympics must always follow the Olympic Games. The IPC would also be represented on IOC commissions covering such issues as the evaluation of candidate cities for the Olympic Games, coordination for the Olympic Games, culture and Olympic education and athletes, and on the working group addressing women and sport. The IOC would also continue to give financial support to the Paralympic movement, the agreement concluded.