Apart from the extraordinary abilities of the Para athletes, there’s a lot about the Paralympic Games that we might be unaware of and will be stunned to know. The Paralympic Games were organized by Sir Ludwig Guttmann who was a Jewish doctor who migrated to London as the Nazis grew to power.
The first edition of the Stoke Mandeville Games was held on 29 July 1948 and the name was later changed to the Paralympic Games which first took place in Rome, Italy in 1960. The first edition, Stoke Mandeville Games had 16 injured servicemen and women compete in archery.
The Paralympic games were hosted in 1964 in Tokyo and yet again for the second time, Tokyo made a record of hosting the Paralympic games twice in a city. The Summer Paralympic Games have been held every four years since 1960. In Rio 2016, Paralympic Games broke the TV records with a 4.1 audience viewing it and 83 countries won at least one medal which was the most in the Paralympic Games history.
Badminton and Taekwondo made their Paralympic debuts at Tokyo 2020.
While most of the sports are a part of the Olympic Games, Boccia and goalball are the only two sports in the Paralympic Games that lack an Olympic counterpart.
A combination of darts and archery, dartchery was also a part of the Paralympic program.
Wheelchair tennis was created in 1976 by Brad Parks as he was experimenting with tennis because he was injured while skiing.
The runners who have impaired vision are tethered to a guide runner with the help of a tiny strap and they are supposed to finish in front of their guide runners.
US swimmer Trischa Zorn holds 55 medals in the Paralympic Games out of which 32 are Gold medals.
The Tokyo Paralympic Games is reported to be the largest in history with the participation of around 4500 athletes. Ever since the Seoul 1988 Games, both Olympics, and Paralympics have been held together in the same city.
