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From the Ancient Games to the Modern Paralympics

The origins of the Olympic games are in fact nearly 3,000 years old.  Back then, there were fewer sporting events and athletes were only allowed to compete if they were men and spoke Greek, no women were allowed.  Like the Modern Games, the Ancient Games brought together the best athletes to compete, but there were also awards for poets, writers and musicians. The Ancient Games were always held in Greece and didn’t move from country to country. The games that we recognise today as the Olympic Games is much more recent. Following a revival in interest in the ancient Greek competition, the first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens in 1896. The Paralympics are even more recent with the first official games held in 1960. The Paralympic Games is a major international multi-sport event, involving athletes with a range of physical and intellectual disabilities, including mobility disabilities, amputations, blindness, and cerebral palsy. Given the wide variety of disabilities that Paralympic athletes have, there are several categories in which the athletes compete. The allowable disabilities are broken down into six broad categories. The categories are amputee, cerebral palsy, intellectual disability, wheelchair, visually impaired, and Les Autres (literally "The Others", which are athletes with disabilities that do not fall into the other five categories; these include dwarfism, multiple sclerosis, and congenital disorders). These categories are further broken down into classifications, which vary from sport to sport.

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